18,500 copies shipped to 25+ campuses!

The February issue has shipped! Students at over 25 college campuses will have an opportunity to learn about Ayn Rand’s ideas. 18,500 copies were ordered–TU’s 3rd highest order total ever!

If you’re a student and TU is not distributed on your campus, click on the PDF link to the right to see what your fellow students are missing.

To our distributors–a heartfelt thank you. Together we are turning intent into action, and making an impact on this world that we love.

Last day to order Feb Issue: Tues Feb 6th.

Dear student/supporter or the Undercurrent,

The new edition of the Undercurrent is now online. Click on the PDF link to see how the print copy looks.

We hope that you will choose to distribute this issue. All it takes is five minutes a week to place copies around campus. By doing that, you can help us promote Atlas Shrugged and make the students around you more receptive to Objectivism.

The deadline for ordering the February issue of the Undercurrent is Tuesday February 6th. Place your orders by clicking distribute above.

If you want to distribute but the cost of copies is an obstacle, please let me know so that I can try to find a donor to subsidize your school.

As always, thanks kindly for your support and enthusiasm.

The Conservatives’ War on Birth Control

Religious conservatives are increasingly opposing birth control. The Bush administration has shifted funding from sex education endorsing condoms to programs preaching “abstinence only.” And Bush F.D.A. appointees spent three years blocking nonprescription use of the “morning after” pill, despite overwhelming evidence of its safety. Shockingly, there has been an increasing number of Christian pharmacists refusing to fill contraceptive prescriptions–in some cases even for ordinary birth control pills for married women. What is behind this disturbing hostility to reproductive freedom?

Religious conservatives insist that their growing opposition to contraception is not the product of some sort of puritan, anti-sex agenda. What they are concerned about, they claim, is irresponsible sexual indulgence. They decry what they see as a culture of mindless promiscuity spawned by the advent of effective and easily available birth control.

But blaming birth control for the irresponsible actions of those who misuse it is like blaming Sudafed for crystal meth addiction. Like any other technology, contraception is a tool that can be used rationally or abused–and used properly it enables people to be more responsible about sex. It is bizarre to crusade against irresponsible sexuality by crusading for the renunciation of responsibility: the conscious, deliberate rejection of rational family planning in favor of reproductive roulette. Clearly, there is something deeper underlying the growing antagonism to birth control.

It is significant that in opposing contraception, conservatives declare that sex must be inextricably tied to reproduction–that it is morally wrong to pursue sexual pleasure while deliberately preventing pregnancy. “To demand sexual pleasure without openness to children is to violate a sacred trust,” writes Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. But this implies a certain hostility to sexual pleasure, as such: not its irrational, promiscuous pursuit, but the very act of enjoying sex as something separate from reproduction. What explains such hostility?

Consider that sexual desire is a response to personal values. For a rational person, it is not a desire for mindless, indiscriminate indulgence, but a feeling that results from the embodiment in one’s lover of one’s highest, most important values. For a couple in a serious, committed, romantic relationship, sex is a celebration of their love–an expression, in the form of intense physical pleasure, of the joy that each partner derives from the other.

But such joy is a selfish pleasure–a rationally selfish pleasure. It is a pleasure that people pursue for the sake of their own enjoyment and happiness, whether they choose to have children or not. And this, fundamentally, is what religious conservatives have against it.

Virtue, according to Christianity, consists of sacrificing one’s desires and goals in the name of fulfilling one’s duties to God. Sex, on this premise, is at best a necessary evil–a sinful act, justifiable only by the duty to procreate. To deliberately prevent pregnancy by using birth control is to assert one’s right to enjoy sex purely for its own sake–not as a means to procreation, but purely as an end in itself. And this is what conservatives find unacceptable. What they object to is that a couple using birth control is placing their own, personal happiness above obedience to religion. They object to contraception not despite the fact that it removes the fear of unwanted pregnancy, but precisely because it removes that fear.

To proclaim categorically, as Mohler does, that “every marriage must be open to the gift of children” is to demand that a couple sacrifice their own dreams and long-range goals to an alleged duty to “be fruitful and multiply.” Even a couple who wants to have children must, on this premise, do so out of submission to divine will–not because they value children as a source of personal joy. The rejection of birth control is the demand that couples surrender the power–crucial to their own happiness in life–of choosing when, or whether, to have children, and instead allow themselves to be reduced, by means of their healthy sexual desires, to the role of stock farm animals, breeding uncontrollably.

Though they claim their intention is not to condemn sexuality as such, but merely its indiscriminate pursuit, religious conservatives are in fact opposed to sexual happiness. They are opposed to the fact that sex is an exalted pleasure that people pursue as an end in itself. Their war on contraception is not a war against the alleged excesses of the “birth control revolution”–it is a declaration of war against the pursuit of happiness.

Dr. Lockitch is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. His writings have appeared in publications such as The Intellectual Activist, The Orange County Register, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Bombs, Not Ballots

In a January 10th speech, President Bush outlined his new plan to rescue Iraq from the bloody sectarian warfare that has gripped Baghdad since 2005. Bush’s plan calls for an additional 20,000 U.S. soldiers to be sent to Iraq to help quell the violence. His supporters are guardedly optimistic that the strategy can succeed. His critics say the plan is too little, too late.

There is a problem with the President’s plan, however that problem lies not with the strategy it proposes, but the goal at which it aims.

Why are American soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq? Is it in order to crush a dangerous enemy, as was our goal in World War II? No, says Bush. Our goal is to advance “liberty across a troubled region,” to help the people in the Middle East as they “raise up just and hopeful societies.” Our purpose in Iraq is not to defeat a threat but to ensure “the survival of a young democracy.” Bush has abandoned the goal of American victory for the goal of spreading democracy.

When Bush uses the term democracy, does he mean an American-style secular system that protects the individual’s right to life, liberty, and property-or does he mean a system in which the majority has the power to impose its desires on the minority? Bush answered that question himself. When asked what he would do if the people of the Middle East want to democratically elect Islamic theocracies ruled by Sharia law, he responded, “Democracy is democracy. If that’s what the people choose, that’s what the people choose.”

And that is what the Iraqis chose. Last year, they voted for a constitution that made Islam the supreme law of the land. The same occurred in other regions where the Bush administration actively encouraged democracy: Afghanistan’s new constitution enshrines Islamic law; the Palestinians voted for rule by the Islamic terrorist group Hamas; elections in Lebanon gave members of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah seats in the Lebanese government.

Bush claims that by creating democracies in the Middle East, we are strengthening American security. But the truth is the opposite: the mission to spread democracy is making the United States less secure. And all the while, more and more of our brave soldiers are being slaughtered by the same Iraqis Bush has sent them to “liberate.”

Only willful blindness can enable Bush to maintain that democracy in Iraq will lead to American security. American security requires defeating political Islam, not encouraging it. Creating Middle Eastern democracies is not a means to Bush’s goal-it is his goal. And it is a goal he pursues at the expense of America’s security.

Nowhere is Bush’s disregard for American security more clear than in his policy regarding Iran. Iran is the father of political Islam and the chief source of the ideology of Islamic totalitarianism. The U.S. State Department has consistently identified it as the number one state sponsor of terrorism. A U.S. federal court ruled recently that the bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996, which killed nineteen U.S. servicemen, was authorized by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. The Iranian government is committed to pursuing nuclear weapons, and it openly admits it is committed to destroying America’s ally, Israel. And, as Bush himself pointed out in his speech, Iran is helping to fund and arm the Iraqi insurgency, which has murdered thousands of U.S. soldiers.

A country that funds and arms terrorists, that funds and arms the Iraqi insurgents, that is openly trying to secure nuclear technology, and that is the main ideological source of totalitarian Islam is a country that is effectively in a state of war with America. If American security were one’s goal, then crushing the Iranian threat would be one’s chief aim. Yet Bush has taken no action against Iran-and assures us he has no plans to.

Bush’s policy of creating democracies is suicidal. But what political alternative is there to this suicide? The Democrats say that America needs to forget about achieving victory and get our soldiers out of Iraq as fast as possible. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommends that America admit its failure and implore Syria and Iran to help stop the violence in Iraq. Such “solutions” represent a policy of defeat. They leave unpunished and emboldened the insurgency that has murdered thousands of American soldiers, and do not address the wider threat of Islamic totalitarianism.

Neither the left nor the right offers us a strategy aimed at victory over our Islamist enemies. One side demands our troops be sent home in humble defeat-the other side demands they be sent home in body bags.

A strategy for victory in Iraq, and in the wider war against Islamic totalitarianism, must begin by rejecting Mr. Bush’s self-sacrificial goal of bringing democracy to the Middle East. It must make our first priority crushing the enemy-in Iraq, Iran, and in any other nation that threatens American security.

Mr. Wooden is a writer

The Value of Atlas Shrugged

Originally published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged, one of the most controversial novels in American fiction, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Annual sales have been growing for years, and may grow even faster if Hollywood talk of a film-adaptation proves accurate.

Atlas Shrugged is routinely included on ‘favorite books’ surveys. It is not uncommon to hear a businessman, a teacher, a truck driver, or a musician say, “Atlas changed my life.” How is it that a fifty-year old, 1200-page novel about industrialists and inventors can have such an effect on so many people?

Written by Ayn Rand, the Russian-born philosopher who escaped communism early in the 20th century, Atlas is a compelling novel about a cast of business executives struggling to achieve their interests in an inimical world. Set in New York City, it tells the story of Dagny Taggart, an underappreciated railroad VP, who fights to save her company from the incompetence and envy of her brother, the company’s President; of Henry Rearden, creator of a new metal alloy, who defends his invention against government bureaucrats who first mistrust then covet the valuable metal; of Francisco D’Anconia, heir to a lucrative copper mining firm, who pursues his own mysterious agenda while seemingly wasting away his wealth on frivolities; and of several other protagonists, each struggling in their own way to achieve and articulate their personal values.

What makes Atlas different is its philosophic depth. Underneath the suspenseful action, the story is fundamentally an intellectual mystery. Why do characters make the choices they do? What ideas animate them? The answers penetrate to the very core of Western Civilization’s traditions and values: Is man his brother’s keeper? Is the love of money the root of all evil? Is sexual pleasure base? Is happiness possible? What does it mean to be moral?

Atlas Shrugged, like all classics of literature, dramatizes a particular worldview, a way of approaching life that readers can judge, learn from, and incorporate into their own perspective. Unlike other classics, however, Atlas dramatizes values that are normally opposed in our culture-the justice of unfettered capitalism, the morality of principled egoism, the absolute efficacy of human reason. The heroes of Atlas are idealized expressions of values normally attacked in America’s college classrooms, churches and political platforms: commercialism, selfishness, and rational certainty.

If college is a time to survey the intellectual landscape in order to discover one’s own identity, if it is a time to read the great works of literature and philosophy, then it is eminently a time to read Atlas Shrugged. Atlas is a novel about what it means to be moral-and the answer, presented in an intense, page-turning, emotionally moving, intellectually challenging form, is one that will otherwise not be given a fair hearing. And it will be unlike anything you’ve ever encountered before.

Matter Over Mindlessness: Neo-Buddhism No Cure for Harvard’s Depression

In its usual capacity as scholastic trend-setter, Harvard University unleashed a strange phenomenon on academia last year: amid the marble halls and ivy thickets, visiting professor Tal Ben-Shahar attracted a record population of Harvard students to a class about “squeezing lemons into lemonade.” In the spring 2006 semester, the course-called “Positive Psychology”-weighed in at 855 students, becoming Harvard’s most popular class. Ben-Shahar’s course may or may not accurately represent the Positive Psychology movement growing in America today, but it does represent another intellectual phenomenon that appears to be spreading like wildfire in the West; namely, the religious mysticism of the East. Ben-Shahar quotes the Dalai Lama and the Buddha extensively throughout his course and teaches books inspired by Buddhist thought and practice, such as “Destructive Emotions: A Dialogue with the Dalai Lama” and the Dalai Lama’s own article “The Monk in the Lab.”

Shahar’s injection of Eastern mysticism into a modern Western classroom represents a broader trend that has been spreading for decades. According to a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, the count of Buddhists in America grew by 170% between 1990 and 2000. In 1960, there were 200,000 Buddhists in the States. Today, the number is conservatively estimated at 1.5 million, with converts of non-Asian origin accounting for about one third. And the number of so-called “night-stand Buddhists,” who attend weekly meditation meetings and admire the Dalai Lama as a significant spiritual leader, is vastly higher.

What compels so many Americans to seek the guidance of Eastern religion, or so many Harvard students to register for Ben-Shahar’s unabashedly “zany” class? Shahar’s lecture notes, which are publicly accessible on the Web, report that depression in America today is 10 times higher than in 1960, and that, in a recent survey, 80% of Harvard students admitted to having been depressed at least once during the past year. And psychology only reinforces this reign of unhappiness, argues Ben-Shahar, by focusing on pathology rather than offering practical, positive guidance. Neo-Freudian theories of psychology inevitably focus on the negative, he says, since man in their view comes built in with base instincts and genetic limitations that bar him from achieving any positive change in life.

Shahar, however, rejects this view. Day 9 of his syllabus asks, “Can we change?” and day 10 answers: “Yes, we can change!” This promise attracts swarms of students to his conversational “self-help” course. And it virtually mirrors Buddhism’s promise to its adherents. According to an article by Jan Nattlier in PBS.org, the “single factor most often credited by converts” is “an existential longing for a road map for personal change.” Buddhism outlines “clear-cut instructions for dally religious practice,” which range from “chanting to meditating to receiving initiation from a guru.” And it offers the “promise that the conscientious observance of these practices will result in a profound change in one’s spiritual condition.”

How, specifically, is this change achieved? Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths preach that the “cessation of suffering” and the achievement of “Nirvana,” the ultimate state of Enlightenment and joy, must come from within-from a mental focus on one’s inner self and away from “thirsting” for impermanent pleasures such as “health, possessions, and even one’s own life” (the Second Noble Truth). It is not in the achievement of one’s real-life goals and desires that Buddhism seeks to aid its practitioners, but in the reprogramming of their inner mental state to erase external desires.

Ben-Shahar, while not preaching the literal core principles of Buddhism in his Positive Psychology course, similarly offers few psychological tools for dealing with life’s real challenges. He teaches instead that changing the mind’s “perspective on reality” is what counts. “Happiness,” Shahar says, “is mostly dependent on our state of mind, not on our status or the state of our bank account. “Beliefs shape reality,” he says; therefore, “Psychology shouldn’t act on reality, but create reality.” External factors, like grades and material wealth, only cause us stress and lower our self-esteem, says Shahar in class 5; the “power of the mind” enables us to overcome such factors, by cultivating happiness “within.” Toward this end, he advocates Buddhist meditation and “fake smiles” as means to cultivating positive feelings. It seems that, in Shahar’s view-and certainly in the classical Buddhist view-we can change not how we live or what we do in external reality, but only our inner perception of it.

Could such advice seriously be implemented? Imagine that a Harvard freshman, inspired by Ben-Shahar’s course, accepts the Buddhist doctrine in practice. Instead of cramming all night to pass the upcoming biology exam, he will close his textbook once the stress ensues and instead take a meditative stroll around campus. When he fails his exam, he will tell himself it doesn’t really matter; external factors cannot interfere with his sense of inner worth. After he fails the semester, and his parents refuse to fund his education further unless he improves his grades, he lets himself express his anger-giving himself “permission to be human,” as Shahar puts it. So he sleeps in the next morning to give himself time to “cool off”-perhaps missing his interview for a summer internship that would bolster his career prospects (and pay for rent). When he is out of money and his academic merits are shot, and his job at Wal-Mart starts to bore him silly, he will try to “cope” with his feeling of ineptness and his waning eagerness to act; but alas, such “negative feelings” will only mount. Life will not squeeze itself into his lemonade glass, no matter how “positive” his mindset. Faced with the painful consequences of his actions on his life and goals, his mindset, too, will deteriorate.

Practiced consistently, this “mind-over-matter” philosophy derived from Eastern mysticism cannot serve as a guide to happiness, but only as an excuse for inaction. Reality is not “in the mind of the perceiver”: no matter how hard one focuses inward, one cannot cure a toothache or build an airplane by meditation. To change the external circumstances of your life, you must take external actions.

Nor can one simply turn away from external reality. Happiness is the result of real achievements. If the Harvard freshman sees his GPA slip, and knows it will diminish his chances of a rewarding job, no amount of meditation will help him “feel good” about the failure. Only real action can improve his situation. When an athlete overcomes a seemingly impossible barrier by “believing in himself,” or a professor overcomes his fear of public speaking-both cited as examples of “mind-over-matter” by Shahar-real work must in fact be done to affect the reality of the situation. An athlete has to build endurance in his muscles and invest money in top-notch trainers; the professor has to prepare interesting and solidly structured lectures that will engage his audience, produce a positive response, and thus increase his confidence over time. And that requires plenty of focus on “external factors”-on the objective demands of one’s task and the actions one must take to meet them.

Yet those demands are not known automatically. The task of setting and achieving goals is difficult; like any learned skill, it requires principled guidelines. Today, having been failed by the neo-Freudian psychologists, students and Americans at large are seeking that guidance from academically legitimized Eastern mysticism-and are betrayed.

Caught in the jaws of this two-pronged beast-the neo-Freudian psychologist who tells them they are impotent to alter grim reality, and the neo-Buddhist practitioner who tells them they can alter their awareness only by becoming unaware (that is, by turning away from reality)-no wonder too many of today’s college students are depressed. If they wish to find true guidance for living a “fulfilling and flourishing life” in the external world-the only place it can be lived-what they need is not neo-Freudianism or Buddhism, but a theory that unites mind and matter, and promotes mindful action over mind-numbing passivity. What they need is Ayn Rand’s ethics of rational self-interest.

Gena Gorlin is a junior attending Tufts University and the New England Conservatory

How To Fully Support Our Troops

Whatever their views of President Bush’s new “surge” of 20,000 soldiers, both liberals and conservatives continue to claim that they support our troops. Liberals say they support our troops by criticizing or opposing “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” which they claim has unnecessarily killed 3,000 soldiers. Conservatives say they support our troops by supporting the mission that most of our troops believe in.

In fact, neither liberals nor conservatives truly support the brave men and women who risk their lives to defend America. For both, “support our troops” is a cheap, undeserved claim to patriotism–one that obscures their unwillingness to do what is truly necessary to protect America and its soldiers.

Granted, almost everyone wants to give our troops the resources they need to do their jobs: the best weapons, armor, provisions, and training available-as well as praise, gratitude, and encouragement. But for our government to truly support our troops, it must do far more than help them do their jobs; it must give them the right jobs to do–the jobs that will effectively defend America while minimizing the risk to their lives. Our government must place soldiers’ lives at risk only when American freedom is threatened, and during war it must give them the objectives and tactics that will defeat the enemy as quickly as possible.

The conservatives’ Iraq war does not meet this standard. It could have–if the war had been undertaken as a step in defeating the anti-American, terrorist-sponsoring regimes of the Middle East and thus rendering the region non-threatening. Instead, President Bush made the war’s primary focus the welfare of Iraqis–above all, their “freedom” to elect whatever regime they wished, no matter how anti-American. Further sacrificing Americans to Iraqis, Bush and his subordinates imposed crippling “rules of engagement” (also supported by liberals) that place the lives of civilians in enemy territory above our soldiers. Our hamstrung troops in Iraq have not been allowed to smash a militarily puny insurgency; instead, they have been forced to suffer an endless series of deaths by an undefeated enemy, while Islamic totalitarians worldwide rejoice in our defeat.

One does not support our troops by sending them to fight wars of self-sacrifice and then thanking their corpses. The conservatives’ call to “stay the course” in Iraq-or to add 20,000 troops to that course–is harmful to America and its troops because the mission has been conceived and conducted in defiance of American interests.

If the conservatives do not support our troops, then do the liberals? Absolutely not.

Observe that while liberals criticize the Iraq war for killing our troops, they propose no alternative policy that would protect America against Islamic totalitarianism and its state supporters, including the militant, terrorist theocracy of Iran. Liberals’ only policy proposal is that we not take military action in Iraq or in any other country beyond Afghanistan. Why? Because they believe that America has no right to defy the “international community” or “impose its will on the rest of the world”–i.e., to aggressively pursue its self-defense. They, like the conservatives, advocate self-sacrifice in foreign policy. Denying our right to an all-out military defense, liberals say we must engage committed enemies like Iran with endless “diplomacy,” i.e., bribery, appeasement, and inaction.

One does not support our troops by keeping them home when their and our freedom requires military action. Our soldiers did not join the military to sit on their hands while Iran prepares for nuclear jihad.

If liberals were truly concerned with our troops in Iraq and the freedom our soldiers should be fighting for, they would call for our soldiers to smash the insurgency and move on to defeat our other enemies. Instead, they call for a self-effacing retreat from Iraq, followed by further kowtowing to the anti-Americans at the United Nations–actions that would greatly embolden the Islamic totalitarians.

Liberals oppose the Iraq war and other wars, not because they truly value our soldiers, but because they–like the conservatives–oppose our soldiers mounting an uncompromising, self-assertive defense of America. But such a defense is required to defeat the threat of Islamic totalitarianism. We must adopt a foreign policy of self-interest and commit to defend ourselves using our full, unmatched military might. Neither the conservatives nor the liberals support this, and thus they end up sacrificing our troops and our freedom.

Do not let the conservatives or liberals pose as defenders of America or its military. Demand that they start truly protecting America and its soldiers–or be scorned as traitors to both.

Alex Epstein is a Junior Fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. He is also a contributing writer for The Objective Standard, a quarterly journal of culture and politics.