Navigator, November, 2003

Editor's Desk

In This Issue

Letters to the Editor:
How Chile was Saved
Can there be an 'After Socialism'?

Feature Story:

The Party of Modernity by David Kelley
The values of modernity, which flourished in the Enlightenment, still animate much of American life. A commitment to reason is still the dominant principle in the sciences, technology, and business. In the realm of personal life and aspirations, a sizable population takes personal happiness as their main concern. Yet these people do not think of themselves as sharing an outlook, comparable to Catholicism or Buddhism. If the modernist perspective is once again to be a force in their culture, we must articulate it as a unique, coherent philosophy.

Perspectives:

Review: The Ten Best Films—Objectively Speaking by Robert James Bidinotto
To make the author's list, a film must be technically proficient, advance an unambiguously heroic view of human potential, and manifest one or more of the distinctively Objectivist virtues: rationality, productiveness, intellectual independence, self-realization, and pride. Bonus points go to pro-capitalist movies.

Review: One Hundred Film Classics by Robert James Bidinotto
Using such categories as "Integrity," "Justice," and "Grand Passions," Bidinotto compiles a shelf-full of movies for the Objectivist sense of life.

The Battle for Toleration—and Its Betrayal by Roger Donway
According to Alan Charles Kors, "Voltaire's deepest influence on Western civilization is the enshrining of toleration as a virtue." Yet today the concept of toleration he promoted has been thoroughly perverted.

Soundings

Suggested Readings on Modernity

Logbook:

David Kelley, Stephen Hicks, and Michael Newberry Address Conference of New Art Foundation
Explore the TOC Web Site
Arrivals and Departures at TOC
Ed Hudgins Visits East-Central Europe
Sightings