The New 800-Pound Gorilla on the Block

There is a Chinese curse -- or at least I think it's a Chinese curse 'cause all the good ones are Chinese -- that goes something like, "May you live in interesting times." With the rise of Islamic terrorism, it is safe to say that we have fallen under that curse here in the West. A great comfort to me, personally, has been the rise to prominence of the New Intellectuals, of a cadre of thinkers influenced by Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Our culture is in dire need of a fundamental, philosophic, revolution if it is to recover from the wounds dealt it by the nihilism of the late 20th century while fighting off the still-growing threat posed by religious fanaticism.

My favorite such intellectual, Robert Tracinski, has announced his blog today. It's Tiadaily.com. This blog is a sample of the daily version of his Objectivist review, The Intellectual Activist, to which I subscribe. I'd enjoyed his syndicated columns for quite some time via Jewish World Review and the Ayn Rand Institute's Media Link. He disappeared for some time and then I learned by chance that he'd taken over the Intellectual Activist. I was happy and, frankly, relieved to learn that he is still writing. What I like the most about his writing is that he succeeds in honing in on the essential issues underlying sometimes complicated current events or trends, analyzes them from a pro-reason perspective, and then writes about them clearly enough for the general reader. In this day and age, we can't have too many Robert Tracinskis. I'm glad to see he's now on the blogosphere to take things up a notch!

I wish Tiadaily.com the best of luck!

-- CAV