Tea Parties - America's New Direction?

On April 15, 2009 Tea Parties protesting the government's fiscal irresponsibility took place throughout the nation. A second Tea Party is being planned for July 4.

Rejecting socialism, Tea Party participants are acting fundamentally on the principle of individual rights. It is right to earn a living. It is wrong to give our earnings to those who don’t. It is right to benefit from one’s own efforts and actions. It is wrong to "bail out" companies which the government caused to fail in the first place, then make us pay for the government's mistakes.

Government-created Fannie and Freddie Mae unleashed Barney Frank's "Affordable Housing" program and pressured banks and insurance companies to give loans and coverage to those who could not afford it. Yet the government claims that capitalism has failed and more government intervention is required. But the present economic system is not capitalism and it is not free.

We live in a "mixed economy"---one with some freedom and many controls. We are still free to start a business, but not free to run it the way we see fit. Government regulations presently control every size business on every level---federal, state and city. We are still free to own some property and visit stores of our choice, but the government controls and regulates virtually every product and service we buy, including entertainment, energy, land, fuel and the air waves.

We have been misinformed about the nature of an economic system that is founded on the individual's right to his own life, to benefit from his own effort, to dispose of what he earns as he chooses. We have been misled about an economic system that despite continuous government interference has resulted in the creation of the richest nation on earth, filled with the most generous individuals on earth. It is an economic system that has been vilified, maligned, distorted and made the scapegoat of every government failure and disaster caused by government regulation since the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. That system is capitalism.

"Capitalism," novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand wrote, "is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned."

In a completely free society, the government's role is solely to protect individual rights. It leaves men free to produce or not as they choose, to work to the best of their ability or not as they choose, to trade with others, to benefit from their own effort, to save and invest and support charities as they choose.

But over many decades government has increasingly violated our rights and eroded our freedom. Today we are seeing the culmination of that erosion in an open assault on individual freedom. Kennedy's bill, for instance, to make "volunteerism" mandatory for all Americans, from children to seniors, is as flagrant a contradiction in terms as it is a blatant attack on individual rights of life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

To safeguard the individual and thereby the nation, men must be left free to think and act and work without government controls and regulations. Tea Parties may be the catalyst that will help to shift our country toward a genuinely free and morally sound direction. They may be the beginning of a grass roots movement to tell government to leave us alone. Get out of our lives. Limit government. Protect individual rights. Let us implement a truly free enterprise system of economics. Let us for once practice genuine laissez-faire capitalism.

Suggested Reading:
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal
Ayn Rand, Philosophy Who Needs It

Ayn Rand and the Financial Crisis

In this time of financial crisis and the Democrats' irrational response to it, Americans are showing a growing interest in Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Increasing sales of her masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, have been reported around the United States. Reports in The Economist indicate the same is happening in Great Britain.

People are looking for better answers than the Democrats' frenzied bacchanal of print and spend. Surely appointing tax evaders to cabinet posts have raised many a temper. Even Democrats at the important grass roots level are disenchanted by the proposal to raise taxes on those making $250,000 or more per annum. Such a proposal affects every small businessperson in the country, and many of the self-employed. In protest, one such small businessperson coined the phrase "Going Galt," which has gained considerable publicity.

Raising dividend and capital gains taxes will increase the penalty on those who've worked and struggled a lifetime to save for their retirement. The shamefully dictatorial mindlessness of universal health care will break the back of doctors, the medical profession as a whole, their patients and every hard-working American and their children who will be forced to pay for it. The unbridled insolence of the current administration proposal to "cut back" on doctor's "pay" reminds one of Caligula's mental state.

The only people who will benefit from this orgy of print, spend and dictate will be the corrupt.

This is not what most Americans want. And so we are looking for answers. Answers are available. They lay in our moral base.

The morality, or ethics, one accepts gives rise to the politics one accepts. This is true of every individual whether he is aware of it or not. Since a nation is composed of many individuals, their combined choices will sum to a majority accepting a given ethical system. In this way, the predominating choices shape the nations' politics---its practices if not its principles.

One of the leading questions of ethics is: who should be the beneficiary of a man's actions? Should a man live for himself, or should he live for others?

If he lives for himself he keeps the result of his efforts and uses his property for his own purposes. Our own past history shows that the greater the freedom to live for one's own benefit, the more will men prosper, and so will the nation. Objectivism holds that this is moral. It is called rational selfishness. Individualism, free-enterprise and limited government are its political expressions.

If a man lives for others, then whatever he earns must be given to someone else---inevitably to those who earn less than he does. In this way, as the Soviet Union demonstrated, the standard of living declines radically and the nation as a whole spirals down into poverty and destruction. Objectivism holds that this is immoral. It is called altruism. Collectivism is its political expression. Socialism is an instance of collectivism.

We presently have a "mixed economy," with some freedom and many controls, regulations, restrictions and intrusions into our economic activity and private lives. This has led to many socialistic practices, and if Obama and Pelosi have their way, socialism will surely engulf this nation ever more extensively.

The first step out of this government-created financial mess is to CUT taxes. We are taxed at every level of government. Taxes should be CUT across the board---federal, state and city---and of every kind including property and sales taxes. Leave more money in the hands of those who've earned it. Whatever one may think about the current government's policies, most Americans agree that taxes are too high and too many and they are becoming increasingly onerous.

The first step toward recapturing the original meaning of our nation---a nation of free men---is to recognize the inviolate right of the individual to his life and property, which is based on the ethical system of a man's right to live for himself---i.e., rational selfishness. Once this point of view is adopted, we shall begin to experience a far better future.

Ayn Rand's ethical system rests upon reason and individual rights. To discover the true meaning of capitalism, to establish genuine free-enterprise and authentic limited government, it is her ethical system the United States should adopt.

To learn more, you might care to visit The Ayn Rand Institute web site: http://www.aynrand.org/

At web site of The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights are some interesting articles on the financial crisis: http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_financial_crisis

Suggested Reading:
Atlas Shrugged
The Virtue of Selfishness
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Philosophy Who Needs It