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Ayn Rand (1957 Phyllis Cerf Portrait)
Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum;, . Most sources transliterate her given name as either ''Alisa'' or ''Alissa''. , 1905 â€“ March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (), was a Russian-born American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful and two Broadway plays, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, ''The Fountainhead''. In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the novel ''Atlas Shrugged''. Afterward, until her death in 1982, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays. Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge; she rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism and rejected altruism. In politics, she condemned the ...
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Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), is the second-largest city in Russia. It is situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, with a population of roughly 5.4 million residents. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe after Istanbul, Moscow and London, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As Russia's Imperial capital, and a historically strategic port, it is governed as a federal city. The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after apostle Saint Peter. In Russia, Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with t ...
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Faith
Faith, derived from Latin ''fides'' and Old French ''feid'', is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or In the context of religion, one can define faith as "belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion". Religious people often think of faith as confidence based on a perceived degree of warrant, or evidence while others who are more skeptical of religion tend to think of faith as simply belief without evidence.Russell, Bertrand"Will Religious Faith Cure Our Troubles?" ''Human Society in Ethics and Politics''. Ch 7. Pt 2. Retrieved 16 August 2009. Etymology The English word ''faith'' is thought to date from 1200 to 1250, from the Middle English ''feith'', via Anglo-French ''fed'', Old French ''feid'', ''feit'' from Latin ''fidem'', accusative of ''fidēs'' (trust), akin to ''fīdere'' (to trust). Stages of faith development James W. Fowler (1940–2015) proposes a series of stages of faith-development (or spiritual development) across the human lifespan. ...
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Libertarian Movement In The United States
In the United States, libertarianism is a political philosophy promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of conservatism and liberalism in the United States, libertarianism has been described as ''conservative'' on economic issues (economic liberalism) and '' liberal'' on personal freedom (civil libertarianism),Boaz, David; Kirby, David (October 18, 2006). ''The Libertarian Vote''. Cato Institute. often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism.Olsen, Edward A. (2002). ''US National Defense for the Twenty-First Century: The Grand Exit Strategy''. Taylor & Francisp. 182 . . Broadly, there are four principal traditions within libertarianism, namely the libertarianism that developed in the mid-20th century out of the revival tradition of classical liberalism in the United States after liberalism associated with the New Deal; the libertarianism developed in the 1950s by anarcho-capitalist author Murray Rothbard, who based it on the anti-New Deal Old R ...
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Libertarianism
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's encroachment on and violations of individual liberties; emphasizing the rule of law, pluralism, cosmopolitanism, cooperation, civil and political rights, bodily autonomy, free association, free trade, freedom of expression, freedom of choice, freedom of movement, individualism and voluntary association. Libertarians are often skeptical of or opposed to authority, state power, warfare, militarism and nationalism, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. Various schools of Libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling for the restriction or dissolution of coercive social institutions. Different categori ...
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Private Property
Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property and personal property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or cooperative property, which is owned by a group of non-governmental entities. Private property is foundational to capitalism, an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. The distinction between private and personal property varies depending on political philosophy, with socialist perspectives making a hard distinction between the two. As a legal concept, private property is defined and enforced by a country's political system. History Ideas about and discussion of private property date back to the Persian Empire, and emerge in the Western tradition at least as far back as Plato. Prior to the 18th century, English speakers generally used the word "property" in reference ...
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Individual Rights
Group rights, also known as collective rights, are rights held by a group ''wikt:qua, qua'' a group rather than individually by its members; in contrast, individual rights are rights held by Individuality, individual people; even if they are group-differentiated, which most rights are, they remain individual rights if the right-holders are the individuals themselves. Historically, group rights have been used both to infringe upon and to facilitate individual rights, and the concept remains controversial. Organizational group rights Besides the rights of groups based upon the immutable characteristics of their individual members, other group rights cater toward organizational persons, including nation-states, trade unions, corporations, trade associations, chambers of commerce, specific ethnic groups, and political parties. Such organizations are accorded rights that are particular to their specifically stated functions and their capacities to speak on behalf of their members, i.e. ...
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Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private property, Property rights (economics), property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. In a market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, or ability to maneuver capital or production ability in Capital market, capital and financial markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets. Economists, historians, political economists and sociologists have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include ''Laissez-faire capitalism, laissez-faire'' or free-market capitalism, anarcho-capitalism, state capi ...
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Laissez-faire
''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups. As a system of thought, ''laissez-faire'' rests on the following axioms: "the individual is the basic unit in society, i.e. the standard of measurement in social calculus; the individual has a natural right to freedom; and the physical order of nature is a harmonious and self-regulating system." Another basic principle of ''laissez-faire'' holds that markets should naturally be competitive, a rule that the early advocates of ''laissez-faire'' always emphasized. With the aims of maximizing freedom by allowing markets to self-regulate, early advocates of ''laissez-faire'' proposed a ''impôt unique'', a tax on land rent (similar to Georgism) to replace all taxes that they saw as damaging welfare by penalizing production. Proponents of ''l ...
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Anarchism
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessarily limited to, governments, nation states, and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies or other forms of free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, usually placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, it is usually described alongside communalism and libertarian Marxism as the libertarian wing (libertarian socialism) of the socialist movement. Humans lived in societies without formal hierarchies long before the establishment of formal states, realms, or empires. With the rise of organised hierarchical bodies, scepticism toward authority also rose. Although traces of anarchist thought are found throughout history, modern anarchism emerged from the Enlightenment. ...
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Statism
In political science, statism is the doctrine that the political authority of the state is legitimate to some degree. This may include economic and social policy, especially in regard to taxation and the means of production. While in use since the 1850s, the term statism gained significant usage in American political discourse throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Opposition to statism is termed anti-statism or anarchism. The latter is characterized by a complete rejection of all hierarchical rulership. Overview Statism can take many forms from small government to big government. Minarchism is a political philosophy that prefers a minimal state such as a night-watchman state to protect people from aggression, theft, breach of contract and fraud with military, police and courts. This may also include fire departments, prisons and other functions. The welfare state is another form within the spectrum of statism. Authoritarian philosophies view a strong, authoritative state ...
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Collectivism And Individualism
In sociology, a social organization is a pattern of relationships between and among individuals and social groups. Characteristics of social organization can include qualities such as sexual composition, spatiotemporal cohesion, leadership, structure, division of labor, communication systems, and so on. And because of these characteristics of social organization, people can monitor their everyday work and involvement in other activities that are controlled forms of human interaction. These interactions include: affiliation, collective resources, substitutability of individuals and recorded control. These interactions come together to constitute common features in basic social units such as family, enterprises, clubs, states, etc. These are social organizations. Common examples of modern social organizations are government agencies, NGO's and corporations. Elements Social organizations happen in everyday life. Many people belong to various social structures—institutional ...
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Initiation Of Force
The non-aggression principle (NAP), also called the non-aggression axiom, is a concept in which aggression, defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference (violating or breaching conduct) against either an individual, their propertyWithin the context of the NAP, property is defined as both personal possessions and private property. or against promises (contracts) for which the aggressor is liable and in which the individual is a counterparty, is inherently wrong. There is no single or universal interpretation or definition of the NAP, with different definitions varying in regards to how to treat intellectual property, force, abortion, and other topics. The non-aggression principle is considered by some to be an essential idea in libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism or minarchism. Justifications The principle has been derived by various philosophical approaches, including: * Argumentation ethics: some modern right-libertarian thinkers ground the non-aggression ...
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