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Jan 22, 2025 | 
newideal.aynrand.org | Ben Bayer
On the fifty-second anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are pleased to release this essay which will be part of a new, expanded edition of Ben Bayer’s book Why the Right to Abortion is Sacrosanct, forthcoming from the Ayn Rand Institute Press. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, defenders of abortion rights can no longer appeal to the authority of the Supreme Court to support their position, or as a precedent to support their lawsuits.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
newideal.aynrand.org | Ben Bayer
This November, ballot measures in twelve different states will seek to encode abortion rights into law. Five of them aim to repeal state-level abortion bans adopted after the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Notably in Florida, the vote would overturn the current ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. But the debate over the vote has failed to name the real stakes. Political ads in Florida have spotlighted women who could not get the abortion they needed in a life-threatening emergency.
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Aug 7, 2024 | 
newideal.aynrand.org | Ben Bayer
“Then there’s the accusation of arrogance, of claiming to know everything. But science is humble, it has to be. We love what we don’t know because it gives us something to do.” That’s what Professor Richard Dawkins, the famed evolutionary biologist, said at the premiere secularist conference last fall in Las Vegas.
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Jul 31, 2024 | 
newideal.aynrand.org | Ben Bayer
It’s a relief that the bullet intended for Donald Trump merely grazed his ear and that he survived. But it’s to everyone’s misfortune that the bullet still hit a vital target: the thin skin of American political discourse. When that skin burst, what immediately spilled forth was a torrent of irrational conspiracism.
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Jul 3, 2024 | 
newideal.aynrand.org | Ben Bayer
Louisiana governor Jeff Landry recently signed into law a bill requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public classroom in the state. Oklahoma’s state superintendent of schools Ryan Walters quickly followed up with an order that the Commandments must be taught in all public schools in the state. The measures have been criticized, justifiably, as clear First Amendment violations. But the legal critics have had little to criticize about the Commandments themselves.
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May 10, 2024 | 
quillette.com | Herbert Bushman |Megan Gafford |Ben Bayer |John Aziz
The article that follows forms part of The So-Called Dark Ages, a serialized Quillette history of Late Antiquity, adapted from Herbert Bushman’s ongoing Dark Ages podcast. This is the tenth instalment, and the fifth dedicated to the Huns. To read previous instalments, tracing the history of the Goths, click here.
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May 9, 2024 | 
newideal.aynrand.org | Ben Bayer
Editors’ note: We are republishing a few passages from Ben Bayer’s recent article published in Quillette. You can read the whole article here. Harvard president Claudine Gay stepped down from her post in January over allegations of serial plagiarism. Gay’s critics allege that she had been a “diversity hire”—that is to say, Harvard had not hired Gay for her distinguished academic resume, but because she would be the first black president of Harvard.
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May 8, 2024 | 
quillette.com | Ben Bayer |John Aziz |Helen Pluckrose |Lawrence Krauss
Harvard president Claudine Gay stepped down from her post in January over allegations of serial plagiarism. Gay’s critics allege that she had been a “diversity hire”—that is to say, Harvard had not hired Gay for her distinguished academic resume, but because she would be the first black president of Harvard. Since then, a number of other high-profile Harvard academics have been accused of plagiarism as well. One of the accused is even a psychologist who researches dishonesty.
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Mar 20, 2024 | 
newideal.aynrand.org | Ben Bayer
When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children, conservative politicians feared that their defense of the rights of the unborn would be blamed for derailing IVF treatment for couples desperate to conceive. So politicians like Donald Trump and Nikki Haley urged the Alabama legislature to pass a law making an exception for IVF treatment. The Alabama legislature has now complied.
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Nov 15, 2023 | 
newideal.aynrand.org | Ben Bayer
In the weeks of protests in London against the Israeli war on Hamas, thousands have chanted “Ceasefire!” The organizers of the march, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, have proclaimed their motive in a press release: “Israel has waged a cruel and relentless war on Gaza that has taken thousands of innocent, civilian lives by design.”Some of the protesters would condemn the Hamas attacks that precipitated this war, claiming to recognize Israel’s right to self-defense.
