Sean Saulsbury has narrated 2 audiobooks on Listento.it by 11 authors. The most-rated is The Objective Standard: Fall 2019, Vol. 14, No. 3.
Heroes, Legends, Champions
Summary
This is not a self-help book. Its purpose is not to tell us how to apply the lessons of a hero's life in our own. Rather, it is a theoretical book, explaining what heroes are and why mankind needs them. Before we can emulate heroes, we must properly identify them. We must understand who and what they are...and what they are not. This is a matter of life and death. Some persons, for example, at various times have considered Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Osama bin Laden as heroes. If we are to promote human life, it is necessary for us to clearly understand that and why mass murderers are definitively excluded from the echelon of heroes. Chapters one, two, and three focus on the nature and definition of a hero, and provide a method for distinguishing a hero from non-heroes. Chapter four raises the question of whether, under appropriate circumstances, everyman and everywoman can rise to heroic heights - and answers in the affirmative. Chapters five, six, and seven dispute the time-honored notion that heroism involves self-sacrifice and demonstrate, rather, that heroism, properly understood, involves actions self-fulfilling; heroism and self-sacrifice are, in fact, moral antipodes. Chapter eight discusses an appropriate response to morally flawed heroes - and chapter nine explains the errors of the modern antihero mentality. Finally, chapter ten tells us about the life-giving importance of hero worship. The two appendices validate philosophic principles that underlie the theory of heroes elucidated here: Human life is the standard of moral value and human beings possess free will. This book does not purport to be an exhaustive analysis of a hero's nature. Presumably, there is more to be said. But it is a provocative first step toward understanding the nature of heroes, one that will hopefully spark a lively 21st-century debate of this important subject.
©2019 Andrew Bernstein (P)2020 Andrew Bernstein
The Objective Standard: Fall 2019, Vol. 14, No. 3
Summary
The Fall 2019 issue of The Objective Standard features the following articles, shorts, and reviews: "How I Avoided the Struggles of Most Young Gay People" by Stewart Margolis "John Locke: The Father of Liberalism" by Jon Hersey "The Green New Deal: A Plan to Sink America" by Tim White "Washington Crossing the Delaware: A Beacon of the American Spirit" by Joseph Kellard "The Man Who Electrified Music" by Jon Hersey "How John H. Patterson Modernized Industry" by Jonathan Townley "The Enigma Code Breakers Who Saved the World" by Tim White "Joan of Arc: Heroine of France, Exemplar of Courage" by Tim White "Seven Great Poems on the Glory of Man" by various authors "Dr. Ruth: Preaching the Goodness of Sex" by Timothy Sandefur "Deriving More Joy from One of Life’s Richest Sources" by Jon Hersey "McCartan Delighted in the Sensual World" by Timothy Sandefur "John Milton’s Lovers in Paradise" by Timothy Sandefur "Suffused with Sunlight: The Paintings of John White Alexander" by Timothy Sandefur "Jerry Goldsmith’s Voice of Idealism" by Timothy Sandefur "René Marie: A Voice of Independence" by Timothy Sandefur "Scientific Morality and the Streetlight Effect" by Craig Biddle "The Argument from Intimidation: A Confession of Intellectual Impotence" by Craig Biddle "The Battle for Values in American Westerns" by Timothy Sandefur "Alt-Education Is Filling a Void That Colleges Can’t" by Lolita Allgyer "Entrepreneurs in Space" by Timothy Sandefur "Thanks to Science, Allergies Don’t Have to Keep You Down" by Timothy Sandefur "Socrates: Dramatizing the History of Western Thought" reviewed by Robert Begley "Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less" by Michael Hyatt, reviewed by Jonathan Townley "Pimpernel" Smith (1941), reviewed by Arie Vilner The Objective Standard is a quarterly journal of culture and politics written from an Objectivist perspective (Objectivism being Ayn Rand’s philosophy of reason, egoism, and laissez-faire capitalism). The journal is based on the idea that for every human concern - from personal matters to foreign policy, from the sciences to the arts, from education to legislation - there are demonstrably objective standards by reference to which we can assess what is true or false, good or bad, right or wrong. The purpose of the journal is to analyze and evaluate ideas, trends, events, and policies accordingly. We maintain that the standards of both knowledge and value derive from the facts of reality; that truth is discovered only by means of reason (i.e. through observation and logic); that the factual requirements of man’s life on earth determine his moral values; that the selfish pursuit of one’s own life-serving goals is virtuous; and that individual rights are moral principles defining the fundamental requirements of a civilized society. We stand opposed to the notion that the standards of knowledge and value are not factual but subjective (feeling-based) or other-worldly (faith-based); that truth is ultimately dictated by majority opinion or a "supernatural" being’s will; that democratic consensus or "God’s word" determines what is moral; that sacrifice for "the common good" or in obedience to "God’s commands" is virtuous; and that rights are social conventions or "divine decrees". In stark contrast to these philosophic approaches, ours is a philosophy of reality, reason, egoism, and laissez-faire capitalism.
©2019 Glen Allen Press (P)2019 Glen Allen Press