Requiem for Brian, Iryna and Charlie
Crossing the Rubicon to Rights, Liberty and Capitalism
Nihilism can be defined as the rejection of moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless anyway. And when that ideology takes hold in enough precincts of society, the destruction of prevailing cultural institutions, regardless of their merit, is the effect.
For the destroyers, force is their opportunity for notoriety in their purpose-free lives. But as cowards in search of a cause, they need a mob to celebrate their actions for them. Yet, a mob of cowards need their own support network among the prevailing cultural institutions. Ones led by pragmatists who appease the anti-hero worshipers because it is politically correct.
Today, a glaring example of this is “the right to protest.” Every corporate media talking head that has covered any one of thousands of these “peaceful protests” of blockades, looting and arson in the last five years, regardless of their political stripe, has spewed that bromide.
But because it is that important, the right to protest deserves proper context, as only philosopher Ayn Rand seems able to do,
Such an action involves respect for legality and a protest directed only at a particular law which the individual seeks an opportunity to prove to be unjust. The same is true of a group of individuals when and if the risks involved are their own. But there is no justification, in a civilized society, for the kind of mass civil disobedience that involves the violation of the rights of others—regardless of whether the demonstrators' goal is good or evil. The end does not justify the means.
Pragmatism vs. Rights
Rights are a moral principle. All rights are individual rights. The individual is the smallest minority. The protection of rights is the primary purpose of a civilized society. A society becomes civilized because of its defense of rights. Rights are the freedom to act according to one’s rational self-interest. And rational self-interest includes defending the rights of everyone else.
This is an integrated system. It is complex and elegant. It is complex because everyone has free will and their chosen values run the gamut of life’s opportunities. It is elegant because a rational person will learn and respect reality. There are no contradictions in nature. And obedience to reality - and only reality, is what it means to be honest.
But to the destroyer, there are no rights. To the mob of cowards who canonize the destroyers, there are no rights because reality is subjective and fluid - it is “my reality.” And to the pragmatic appeasers, there are no rational principles – only popularity. Cowards in hoodies led by cowards carrying signs with slogans fed by cowards with microphones. Not elegant.
Make no mistake, the cowards in the hoodies chose to pull the trigger and wield the knife. They have free will; they chose ignorance and cowardice. And they had ideological accomplices: a nihilist subculture and their appeasers in government education, corporate and social media, and universal health care.
Medicine is Not a Right
As stated above, the moral principle of rights includes defending of the rights of everyone else. The consequence of that is nothing can be a right if a duty must be imposed on others to fulfill some need or desire. In other words, demands are not rights – including food, housing and medical care.
But for those inclined to avoid reality in their quest for unearned wealth and power, pandering to the emotional whims of democratic socialism becomes currency. After all, democracy is the will to power by majority vote, and socialism satisfies their desire for the unearned by any means necessary. In that environment, health care is declared a right - by force.
To avoid getting into the impossibly tangled web of medical services delivery and financing, I will focus on a few important aspects of drug development and medical services pricing. This article published September 19, 2025 by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), puts the pharma side into perspective,
Before 1962, developing a new drug took just two years; it now takes 12 to 14 years. Since 1975, capitalized drug development and approval costs have increased at 7.5% per year in real terms, doubling every 10 years. Given this growth rate, we estimate that drug development costs are now, on average, nine billion dollars per successful new drug.
Ten years and billions of dollars in additional research costs to satisfy the State’s mandate for one size fits all efficacy standards - as if all patients will be equally responsive and dropping the context of alternative therapies is a good idea. The FEE article continues,
The solutions proposed by politicians, which have included mandated discounts, price negotiations, and so-called most-favored-nation pricing requirements, expose Americans to a risk that most people do not fully understand or appreciate. Yes, prices can be reduced legislatively. However, those reduced prices also reduce the incentives for drug companies to endure the expensive, lengthy, and risky drug development process.
Which brings me to the pricing mechanism for the involuntary health care market and this excerpt, also from FEE,
The more insidious Welfare State, a pseudo-democratic version of older forms of paternalistic despotism, obtains the same end result through regulation, subsidies, inflation and taxation. And individual freedom is also lost in the process. All areas of economic activity are affected this way, sooner or later, but in this century, medicine has been the arch stone of the edifice of power of the Almighty State, behind curtains of iron and behind curtains of deception alike.
One aspect of the deception can be found in the CPT (Current Procedure Terminology) Reimbursement Codes that are negotiated by the unholy alliance of the American Medical Association (AMA) and Medicare. As of January 1, 2025, the list published by cms.gov includes over 1300 codes.
But depending on where you live and the identity of your third-party payer, you likely don’t pay much attention to how much is paid on your behalf, as described at FEE:
The mechanism by which the physician’s incentives are perverted, again through the “health insurance” schemes, consists of the more favorable coverage and preferential compensation of highly technical and expensive methods of diagnosis and treatment, complementing the system of institutional grants and coupled with the virtual exclusion of the patient from the transaction through the so-called assignment of benefits to the physician. In the process, the insurance carrier (or some agent it hires) undertakes to establish allowable fees for standardized and codified diagnoses and procedures. This is the inception of rationing and of the bureaucratic control of quality in medical care.
A Coward in a Hoodie #1
On December 4, 2024, Brian Thompson was shot in the back as he walked down West 54th Street in midtown Manhattan. Mr. Thompson was the target of a coward in a hoodie because he was the CEO of a significant provider of health insurance coverage. His customers were corporate benefit plans, individual policy holders, Medicare recipients, and state plans for the “economically disadvantaged.”
As an extraordinarily complex business, his company must navigate the arbitrary whims of drug pricing czars, mandated discounts, government subsidies, preferential compensation, expensive testing requirements, benefit assignments, allowable fees and codified procedures. Not only did the entire business of medical services delivery and financing become a government protection racket in the early 1960s, but the costly abuses became enlarged and malignant with the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in 2010.
In summary, health insurance is terribly complex and expensive because patient care, medical facility and drug availability are arbitrarily complex and expensive. It is nearly impossible for consumers to know what is covered, what is not - and most don’t care so long as someone else pays for it.
All of that is because of the will to power by democratically elected “public servants” in their quest for unearned wealth and power. You know, the community organizer who says, “you didn’t build that.” And when all of that fails, as it always does, the cowards in the hoodies who are prone to violence need someone to blame - and their groomers in government schools are more than happy to identify the target: “Corporate Greed.”
But Thompson was a builder. Brian Thompson was murdered because he was good. Ayn Rand prophesized this in her 1957 epic, Atlas Shrugged:
The man in Roomette 3, Car No. 11, was a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities to the effect that all businessmen were scoundrels.
Accordingly, Mr. Thomson’s destroyer became a cult hero with public demonstrations for his support outside the courtroom where is he being tried and on social media around the world.
But more broadly, how many lives have been cut short because experimental medications were not fast-tracked for FDA approval? How many lives have been cut short because capital was directed away from pharmaceutical development by the price distortions and regulatory hurdles? How many brilliant minds have left the medical profession because of Obamacare?
A Coward in a Hoodie #2
Iryna Zarutska was born May 22, 2002, in Kyiv, Ukraine and earned her degree in Art Restoration from Synergy College in Kyiv when she was 20 years old. But after the invasion of her country in 2022 by a dictatorial killer, she was forced to live in a bomb shelter for several months with her family before escaping to America. Because she was still learning to drive a car, Iryna took a train home from her job in a pizza parlor.
Unlike Obama’s Life of Julia campaign, Iryna was independent. And like Brian Thompson, she was productive and loved America. On August 22, 2025, Iryna was murdered by a coward in a hoodie who thrust a pocketknife blade into her neck three times. The killer knew what he was doing: “I got that white girl. I got that white girl.” As Brad Thompson relates the story,
“First, was the utter savagery of the attack; second, was the unbearable sadness of Iryna’s face as she realized what had happened to her; and third, was the fact that no fewer than five people sitting within sight of Iryna did nothing to help her. They just sat there and watched her die. Iryna Zarutska died alone surrounded by people.”
To repeat, the cowards in the hoodies who are prone to violence are responsible for their actions; they just need someone to blame - and their groomers in government schools are more than happy to identify the target: “White Supremacists.”
But Zarutska was building a life. Iryna Zarutska was murdered because she was good. Ayn Rand prophesized this in her 1957 epic, Atlas Shrugged:
The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 16, was a humanitarian who had said, “The men of ability? I do not care what or if they are made to suffer. They must be penalized in order to support the incompetent. Frankly, I do not care whether this is just or not. I take pride in not caring to grant any justice to the able, where mercy to the needy is concerned.
Accordingly, not only did the train passengers do nothing, but Ms. Zarutska’s destroyer was defended by corporate and social media types like Brian Stelter, Van Jones and Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles from the outrage caused by his arbitrary brutality and indifference.
But more broadly, how many lives within “protected groups” have never known the pride of independence because these children were only taught victimhood? How many lives within the “oppressor groups” have surrendered their independence in favor of political correctness? How many lives have been altered to avoid the violence of the democratic socialists who hate America?
A Coward in a Hoodie #3
On September 10, 2025, the man behind the most effective organization in America for educating college students on the subjects of individual rights, political liberty and moral justice was murdered. And the brutality was witnessed by Charlie Kirk’s wife, young daughter and three thousand others during a free, peaceful, public event at a university amphitheater. Kirk was a builder.
To be effective, Kirk educated himself in economics, history, philosophy and persuasion. For that he was murdered. And as revealed in an interview with Jordan Peterson earlier this year, Charlie’s career as a defender of individual rights was in response to the will to power of a democratic socialist from Chicago. That phony “community organizer” was making a career out of pandering to cowards in hoodies and their appeasers with the vacuous political rhetoric of “hope and change.”
Charlie Kirk’s destroyer was not wearing a hoodie, but you can now buy as many hoodies as you like with the killer’s image emblazoned as a hero. Of course, the cowards with the weapons are responsible for their actions; they just need someone to blame - and their groomers in government schools are more than happy to identify the target: “Haters and Fascists.” Ayn Rand prophesized this in her 1957 epic, Atlas Shrugged:
The man in Drawing Room B, Car No, 4, was a newspaper publisher who believed that men are evil by nature and unfit for freedom, that their basic instincts, if left unchecked, are to lie, to rob and to murder one another — and, therefore, men must be ruled by means of lies, robbery and murder, which must be made the exclusive privilege of the rulers.
Volumes can and will be written about the hundreds of corporate journalists who danced on Kirk’s grave - many of them summarily fired by their handlers discovering shame. And about the thousands of “protestors” across America who danced on Kirk’s grave. And about the millions on social media who danced on Kirk’s grave. Why? Because like Brian and Iryna, Charlie was productive and independent. Their lives had purpose and meaning.
In their honor and memory, the purpose of this essay is justice. That begins with moral justice: recognizing and eradicating the hatred of the good. But most importantly, that begins with recognizing and rewarding the good for being good.