The Bastiat Society of Nashville presents "How Covid Exposed a Moral Sickness- and Almost Everyone is Infected."

Register Here

AIER’s Bastiat Society program in Nashville will host an in-person event with Ben Bayer, Fellow and Director of Content at the Ayn Rand Institute.

During the Covid pandemic, people on the political left generally favored stricter pandemic controls (lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, etc.) and other statist economic measures in the name of the public good and usually criticized their opponents as “selfish.” The evidence suggests their policy decisions were not driven by any corruption or conspiracy, but by the moral values they openly championed. Importantly, this doesn’t mean their policies were justified or excusable. If those policies were unjust and destructive, it’s a sign that there is something flawed about the moral values that actually motivated them: the values of selfless sacrifice that are regarded as commonplace on both the left and right. This talk will explore how the Covid pandemic put pressure on American politicians, left and right, to reveal their true core values, what it really means to act on those values, the fundamental problems with these values, and a rational alternative.

Schedule:

• 6:00 - 6:30 pm: Networking
• 6:30 - 7:15 pm: Presentation
• 7:15 - 7:30 pm: Q & A

Ticket Prices:

• $0 for Founding Members
• $10 for Annual Members
• $20 for Non-Members
• $0 for Actively enrolled university students who register with a .edu email address. Those who register with a non-.edu email address will be unregistered and asked to purchase tickets at full price.

Location: Richland Country Club, 1 Club Drive, Nashville, TN 37215

More about the speaker:

Ben Bayer is a fellow and director of content at the Ayn Rand Institute. He teaches in the Objectivist Academic Center and gives talks and interviews for ARI. He writes and edits for ARI’s online publication, New Ideal. Bayer holds a PhD in philosophy (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and among other positions, was a visiting assistant professor at Loyola University in New Orleans for seven years. His writing focuses primarily on the application of philosophy to contemporary cultural and political controversies.

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