Tribalism is resurging, most obviously in politics. But it is also rampant on college campuses. Tribalism has moved from the fringes of society to the mainstream. We live in what’s becoming a tribal age. But even today’s most clear-eyed critics of tribal loyalties leave us with a muddled conception of tribalism, normalizing the phenomenon, pushing it further into the cultural mainstream. In this essay Elan Journo argues that we have much to gain from Ayn Rand’s philosophic analysis of tribalism. Rand not only penetrates to the essence of the phenomenon of tribalism, she lays out clearly a positive alternative, the ideal of individualism, which is the antidote to tribalism. This essay was originally published in New Ideal on May 29, 2019.

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