Objectivism Today 1998:
The Real Culture Wars The Culture of the Enlightenment and its Enemies

Saturday, October 24 Marriott Marquis Hotel
9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., New York City

Speakers Include:

Behind the noisy "culture wars" over prayer in school, sex and violence in the media, gay rights, and other issues is a profound conflict of values.

The culture that first came to flourish in the Enlightenment rests on certain timeless values. Reason, science, and technology. The pursuit of happiness. Respect for individual achievement in every sphere of life. Progress in meeting human needs. Individualism, including the individual's right to choose his convictions and mode of life. Political freedom, including the freedom to produce and exchange.

This is the culture that created the American civilization, yet it is under increasingly explicit attack today not only from post-modern thinkers on the left but from pre-modern critics on the right.

What are the key issues in this battle? What are the prospects for the Enlightenment culture? What role can it play in the battle for liberty? What strategies should its advocates adopt?

The Institute for Objectivist Studies is proud to sponsor a distinguished group of speakers to examine these questions. Join us for a day of insight and cultural renewal.

Schedule:

8:30 - 9:00
Registration

9:00 - 9:15
Opening Remarks
Robert Bidinotto, Director of Development and Special Projects, Institute for Objectivist Studies

9:15 - 10:15
Post Modernism: The Socialist Crisis of Faith
The failures of socialism, both in theory and in practice, have led its intellectual devotees to adopt post-modern ideas as a defense. Stephen Hicks will show how thinkers on the cultural left use such ideas to
legitimate their faith in a false ideal, and to vent their hostility to reason, individualism, and capitalism. Stephen Hicks is chairman of the philosophy department at Rockford College.

10:15 - 10:45
Break

10:45 - 11:45
Where Progress Comes From, and Why It Is Threatened
Drawing on her forthcoming book, The Future and Its Enemies, Reason Editor Virginia Postrel will lay out a dynamic view of progress as an open-ended process—based on experimentation and feedback, dispersed knowledge, combinatoric innovation, and play—and contrast it to the static technocratic and reactionary visions that threaten it politically.

11:45 - 1:15
Luncheon

1:30 - 2:30
The Real Culture Wars
David Kelley, Executive Director of the Institute for Objectivist Studies, will pinpoint the issues that separate the Enlightenment culture from its pre-modern opponents, and discuss the strategies that Objectivists and
their allies can use to garner support from the broad group of Americans whose fundamental values are pro-Enlightenment.

2:30 - 2:45
Break

2:45 - 3:45
Human Accomplishment
Charles Murray will report on his research for his next book, Truth and Reality: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Human Accomplishment, which examines the leading intellectual, artistic, and technological achievements that humans have produced and seeks to explain why certain cultures have achieved on a scale far greater than others. Charles Murray is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of Losing Ground, What It Means to be a Libertarian, and numerous other works.

3:45 - 4:15
Break

4:15 - 5:30
Individualism and the Culture Wars
A panel discussion to review the issues of the day and examine the strategic aspects of the culture wars.

Panelists:

• David Boaz, Executive Vice-President, Cato Institute, author of Libertarianism
• David Kelley, Institute for Objectivist Studies
• Fred Smith, President, Competitive Enterprise Institute

5:30 - 7:00
Reception