From Flat World to Free World

Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, published this commentary "From Flat World to Free World" at Forbes.com on June 16. It is a vigorous defense of capitalism as an ideal.

Some excerpts...

"The expanding economic freedom of the past few decades was primarily a response to the bankruptcy of communism and socialism; it was not based on acceptance of capitalism as an ideal. Without such acceptance, recent political advances--despite the economic success they generated--are vulnerable to the new wave of anti-capitalist measures."

"Capitalism will remain the world's punching bag until such time as the profit motive is rescued from moral oblivion."

"For individual rights to prevail in politics, nothing less than a revolution in ethics will be required--a bloodless revolution--not of arms, but of ideas. You'll know that struggle is over when businessmen are finally viewed not as moral pariahs or ciphers but as paragons of virtue, precisely because they pursue profits."