The US is facing enormous challenges as it enters the second decade of the twenty-first century. Some of these major issues are environmentalism and its claim of global warming; the danger from terrorism generated by Islamic fundamentalism; and affordable, quality health care. Additionally, education in America remains an unresolved dilemma contributing to America''s lack of economic competitiveness.

Andrew Bernstein argues that the US government is pushing the nation toward socialism in its attempt to resolve America''s problems. The government''s increasing control of the banking industry, its massive bailouts of auto makers, and its proposal of emissions legislation are also examples of the expansion of government''s power. Bernstein argues that whatever the intentions of the government, or its illusions about the workability of its proposals, morally upright and practical solutions can only come from moving to the opposite end of the political-economic spectrum: the establishment of laissez-faire capitalism.

In Atlas Shrugged, and in her non-fiction works, Ayn Rand developed a systematic body of thought, a comprehensive philosophy she dubbed "Objectivism." This philosophy has been neglected by most professional intellectuals, but it is now beginning to be seriously studied in academic philosophy departments. Objectivism provides the moral and philosophic validation of the political-economic principles of individual rights and free markets. Analysis of today''s gravest social and political issues within this philosophic framework, as undertaken by Bernstein in this volume, constitutes a unique way of identifying rational solutions to these pressing issues.