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I usually enjoy and agree with opinion pieces published in The Washington Times. But here, in Charles Hurt’s “open letter” to Christopher Nolan, Sean Penn and Warner Brothers, I am convinced that the writer and I have not seen the same movie; perhaps we don’t even live in the same world.

First, how can he lump Sean Penn and Christopher Nolan together? Doesn’t he know that THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, for its part, may be the best depiction of the dangers of nihilism piggy-backing on the socialist/egalitarian movement that we’ve ever seen? At the very least, it’s a much better movie, in terms of dramatizing fundamental ideas (honesty, the importance of the alternative of live vs. death, the dangers of appeasement, the ability of the individual to achieve great things and defeat evil), than one could ever expect to be produced by this culture. (For a detailed, spoiler-filled, analysis of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, listen to my “Don’t Let It Go…Unheard” podcast from Sunday.)

And even though I am no Sean Penn fan (and, leaving aside a pesky cause-and-effect problem of blaming a movie or trailer that has not yet been screened), no film depiction of violence can be blamed for this — or any — massacre. Human beings have something called free will; this makes it possible for Hurt (not me, because I’m an atheist) to imply that people will be going to hell for depicting evil in movies. (As for me, I just judge people as they deserve and act accordingly.) Free will makes us able to identify villains as evil, to side with and be inspired by the heroes, and to act accordingly.

But I guess Hurt would rather create a society of Platonic philosopher-kings who prohibit the depiction of any evil in art, in hopes that refusing to depict evil will have the effect of eradicating it from society? No matter how good a culture is, there will always be a small minority of criminals like the man responsible for the Aurora, CO, massacre. But without great art like THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, to depict the triumph of good over that evil, we can never hope to reach the day when our culture is the best that it can be. Shame on Hurt for selling humanity short like this.

UPDATE: Check out Bosch Fawstin’s piece responding to Charles Hurt, “It Was Him and Him Alone.”

UPDATE 2: In this story we learn that Holmes purchased his semi-automatic on the day he failed an oral PhD exam. In another we learn about a notebook, with elaborate plans for the massacre, that he sent a psychiatrist at his university. Good thing for Hurt that he published his smear piece before we could learn what actually might have led Holmes to do what he did.

While at OCON, I was happy to be asked to appear on the Mike Slater show on KFMB in San Diego. I appeared at 7 a.m. on July 5 and we discussed Islam and Just War Theory in U.S. Military Education, including the suspension of Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley for teaching material critical of Islam. You can hear the podcast file at this link.

To hear podcast recordings of appearances of several other Objectivists who appeared the week of 7/2 – 7/6, go to Mike Slater’s podcast page, and look for the 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. hours each day that week (note that Peter Schwartz appeared at 7 a.m. on 7/6, although his name isn’t listed there).

Enjoy!

Now that I’ve calmed down quite a bit from the shock of today’s ruling — a shock exacerbated by the fact that Fox, reading the opinion as written, initially announced the mandate was struck down — I’ve taken a look at both Obama’s and Romney’s statements about the ruling.

As for Obama, he continues to tell us that we can all keep our insurance, that our insurance companies won’t increase our rates “for no reason,” that in 2014 states will be offering us “an array of quality, affordable, private health insurance plans to choose from,” etc., etc. These are all the lies we’ve been told since the democrats started working to pass this monstrosity.

But what’s more disturbing is this statement from Obama: “Today, the Supreme Court…upheld the principle that people who can afford health insurance should take the responsibility to buy health insurance.” He taught in a law school, right? I think I read somewhere that he even taught Constitutional law. The Supreme Court did not uphold the principle behind the Obamacare legislation. All it did was (perhaps erroneously) uphold this legislation as constitutional. And here is our President, treating today’s ruling as if it’s a mandate for Obamacare as policy! He must be delusional.

And yet, the delusional candidate we don’t know, Mitt Romney, isn’t much better. Watch his brief reaction to the ruling, on this video:

How does Romney propose to mandate that insurance companies accept subscribers with pre-existing conditions, and ensure “access to affordable health care,” without increasing the size and scope of government? Without having “the federal government get between us and our doctors”? In his remarks, he says he plans to do this. I’d like to see precisely how. Obama and his democratic allies found it necessary to force a bunch of young, healthy people into the insurance market, in order to create the pretense of “paying” for goodies of the type that Romney promises.

Take the requirement that insurance companies accept subscribers with preexisting conditions. Why don’t the insurance companies do this already? Because they will lose money. So, if Romney is going to mandate that they accept these subscribers, he either needs to find a way to compensate them, or the companies will go out of business. Same with ensuring access to “affordable” health care. If it was profitable to provide whatever Romney thinks is affordable, then some company would be doing it already. So this, too, will need to be paid for somehow. As we all know too well, Obamacare attempts to “pay” for such goodies by forcing people to buy something — insurance coverage — that they would not otherwise buy. And even so, as Romney himself points out, Obamacare will cause a massive increase in deficits and total debt, because the money brought into the insurance market won’t be enough. Does Romney have superpowers? Is he able to make money grow on trees? Am I missing something?