In 1958, Leonard E. Read wrote “I, Pencil”—a short, brilliant essay about how markets coordinate the countless steps that go into making an ordinary pencil. In addition to its insightful substance, the essay is also noteworthy for Read’s clever literary device: the story is told from the perspective of a pencil. The piece ran...
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Celebrating Life in Union, a new documentary narrated by Andy Garcia, will premiere at the 2012 New York City International Film Festival. Celebrating Life in Union tells the story of the tragedy and brotherhood of a group of former political prisoners from the Cuban Revolution, who fought for, and then were betrayed by their...
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Did you know 2012 is the centenary of Charles Dickens’s birth? Dickens is often lumped with Carlyle, Shaw, Ruskin, etc. as a Romantic, Victorian, literary anti-capitalist. (Carlyle indeed disliked capitalism, but not for the usual reasons.) But Dickens, as I originally learned from Paul Cantor, was a wildly successful capitalist and entrepreneur, a driving force behind the...
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Soviet kids say the darnedest things, art historian Igor Golomstock discovered when he led field trips through Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in the late 1950s. The schoolchildren indicated that they couldn’t distinguish between the propaganda paintings of Nazi Germany on display and the works of Socialist Realism that had flourished (if that...
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In a very good, new article in the Times of London, “Philosophers are finding fresh meanings in truth, beauty and goodness,” philosopher John Cottingham (University of Reading) discusses the fact that the absurdities of what has dominated philosophy and the bulk of intellectual and political culture for at least two hundred years are increasingly...
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On November 13, 2010, unsuspecting shoppers got a big surprise while enjoying their lunch at the Welland Seaway Mall in Welland, Ontario, Canada. More than 100 members of the Christmas Flash Mob broke out to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus,” from George Frideric Handel’s oratorio “Messiah.” This YouTube video of the event has now also...
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The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to my father, Mario Vargas Llosa, is great news for those of us who value freedom. His work, as the Swedish Academy recognized in its public statement, explores the oppressive structures of power and the plight of the individual who rebels against them. His novels examine this...
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In an excellent article in the American Spectator, British philosopher and author Roger Scruton discusses his superb new documentary, Why Beauty Matters, that has recently been shown on the BBC. Scruton incisively examines the importance of beauty in the arts and our lives, including fine arts, music, and architecture. In the process, he illuminates...
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