Navigator, January/February, 2003

Ban Government Racism, Not Discrimination by David Kelley
The current argument for affirmative action is undermined by government funding and corrupted by collectivist premises. But advocates of individualism should recognize that a "meritocratic" approach relying solely on grades and tests is not the answer. The answer is a rational and free society in which a wide variety of schools would be allowed to create widely varying types of student bodies by discriminating among applicants in any number of ways.

Is John Galt Venezuelan? by Thor L. Halvorssen
In January, nearly 90 percent of Venezuelan workers were refusing to participate in the economy that sustains the tyranny of Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez. In effect, the strikers have provided an answer to the question that prompted Ayn Rand to write Atlas Shrugged: What would happen if a society's productive members ceased to subsidize their own enslavement?

We Must Reach for the Stars by Edward L. Hudgins
Edward L. Hudgins, TOC's Washington director and editor of Space: The Free-Market Frontier, pays tribute to the Columbia astronauts.

Articles:

Where's the Art in Today's Art Education? by Michelle Marder Kamhi
Advocates for art education have made inroads toward establishing the visual arts as part of primary- and secondary-school education. Nevertheless, there is cause for deep concern, for serious art of high quality has been rendered more marginal to the content of these programs. It has been displaced by trivial works of popular art and by cultural artifacts, selected mostly for the hidden sociopolitical messages that can be wrung from them.

Rousseau's Children by Roger Donway
In his book Life at the Bottom, psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple describes how his patients at a hospital and prison in the slums of Birmingham, England, got to their pathetic condition. He does not blame their environment, or their genes, or even, chiefly, their upbringing. Rather, he says, these people—and the underclass generally— have reached "the bottom" because of the worldview they have adopted.

Logbook: The Program of TOC's 2003 Summer Seminar