Navigator, November, 2000

Governments Kill the Rule of Law to Get Tobacco Money. When the state government of Florida decided to sue the tobacco companies, it did not want to take a chance of losing the case. Consequently, the legislature simply passed a law abolishing a traditional legal defense-and then reinstated it when the tobacco companies had been bilked. In this article, TOC trustee Robert Levy examines the effects of this state-sponsored extortion.

Hayek Explains Why the Rule of Law Matters. Objectivists have customarily focused their attention on the proscriptions of a country's laws. In this excerpt from The Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich Hayek argues that the generality of those proscriptions is even more important.

Philidor: Grandmaster of the Enlightenment. Few names are widely known in the annals of both chess and music. No one, however, has been as accomplished in both realms as François-André Danican Philidor. In the mid-eighteenth century, Philidor was the grandmaster of two vastly disparate realms: chess and the popular new musical genre of opera buffa.

TOC's Fall Conference Celebrates Individualism. On October 14 and 15, The Objectivist Center held its annual fall conference in New York City. "Individualism: The Once and Future Reign of an Ideal" presented six speakers who analyzed various aspects of that ideal: authenticity, privacy, financial independence, empowerment, mutual aid, and the entrepreneurial life.