Barbara Walters & Jane Fonda

In connection with an honorarium paid to Jane Fonda as one of ABC's "100 Women of the Century," on or around September 14, 2,009, Barbara Walters stated on The View, "I hope that we have all forgiven Jane Fonda for what she did during the Vietnam War and specifically when she visited the Hanoi Hilton."

Regarding this, many readers left comments. I downloaded eleven. Of the eleven, one defended Ms. Fonda because "she was a kid" at the time. Another asked, why was the issue being talked about again now? Nine wrote in the vein that Ms. Fonda committed treason and cannot be forgiven, despite her apology many years after the Vietnam War ended.

I am in agreement in principle with those nine.

We all know what Ms. Fonda did: Her disgraceful words to our soldiers, her shameful conduct toward their captors, her servile allegiance to values and ideals that our Founding Fathers rejected when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Is there any excuse we might consider in Ms. Fonda defense? Can those who take the side of the enemy in time of war be defended or excused?

Given the Leftist influence on our government-run education system, given the Leftist influence in the media, it's certain that Ms. Fonda was as much a victim of collectivism as she was a perpetuator of it. Yet I and countless other Americans, were subjected to the same Leftist influences in government-run public education, and Left-leaning media. We did not accept the view that Communism was superior to individualism. We did not like the idea of our men fighting a war that was not in our interests. We did not like them dying so that politicians could pose as "against communism."

Some point out that Ms. Fonda was "only 18" at the time, too young to know differently. Too young, or too thoughtless? If too young, the fact is that many of us were as young as Ms. Fonda was at that time. But they did not take the side of the enemy. Neither did we burn our flag, although we were opposed to the draft. Nor did we spit at our policeman and call them "pigs." We did not interrupt speakers or yell indecent epithets at them, or refuse to allow them to speak at all. We, too, were not happy that our men were sent to foreign lands to die and/or linger in heinous conditions. But we did not turn on our soldiers, chastising them for fighting a disagreeable war.

Neither education nor age is the deciding factor here. What, then, was the difference between Ms. Fonda and us?

Ideas. The ideas Ms. Fonda acted upon. The ideals, principles and values that Ms. Fonda accepted and which guided her actions.

The consequences of Ms. Fonda's ideas was to denounce American soldiers and POWs, to call them liars because they reported being tortured and beaten, to spitefully chide suffering American POWs with questions such as "are you proud to have killed babies?"

Consider what this nation's ideals are: No man is above the law. Freedom and justice for all under the law. Habeas corpus. Innocent until proven guilty. A jury of one's peers. The sentence of guilt to fit the crime. Debtor's prison outlawed. A division of powers. A limit on presidential terms. The Constitutional freedom of speech, assembly, worship and press.

Consider this nation's basic principles: individual rights, limited government and free markets. Consider this nation's fundamental ruling values: Reason. Purpose. Self-reliance. Self-confidence. Individualism. Lifting oneself up by the bootstraps. The work ethic of "a better mouse trap"---i.e. think of a better way to do something and work like the dickens to achieve it---and putting your "nose to the grindstone."

What are the Communists ideas Ms. Fonda extolled? Man must live for the state. The state knows best. No one may descent from government decree. All rulers are above the law, exempt from the laws all citizens must follow. All citizens are without rights. The government has total control over everyone and everything: how many babies one may have, where one may work, what one may study, where one may live, what meetings one must attend, the able must support the indigent, how many acres of land may be farmed, how many cars may be produced, and so forth. All this Ms. Fonda accepted and fought for against a government that stood for the opposite.

Ms. Fonda acted in exact accordance with the ideas she accepted. She damned those who fought against totalitarianism. She condemned those who did not accept the rule of brute force. She insulted the loyalty and bravery of free men who chose to protect the innocent against the savagery of dictatorship.

We are asked to forgive Jane Fonda. I do not. Moreover, I consider Barbara Walters' "hope" as abysmally lacking in thought as Ms. Fonda's actions during the Vietnam War.

Another joins these two: the individual who left the comment: "Why the heck was this year old post bumped?" This is the same sort of question savages ask about the Holocaust: "Why bring up that old stuff?"

One reason alone: Lest we forget and forgive those who err beyond reason.

Yes, Ms. Walters comment took place about 2 years ago. Yes, Ms. Fonda's actions took place almost 50 years ago. But like the Holocaust, one does not forgive those who acted upon the ideas that made possible such grievous evils.

There is a postscript to this exposition: Why was this two-year old Barbara Walters statement revived? My opinion is that the boiling anger many of us feel against Mr. Obama's actions to change this nation into a collectivist welfare state reminded someone of what such a state means in practice. It means the ideas of Hanoi Jane in charge of us while our best and bravest and most productive are imprisoned, regulated, controlled and ultimately destroyed. We must not allow this to happen.

Ideas and the Coming Election

Polls measuring the political concerns of grassroots Americans consistently show that a majority is "extremely angry about government intrusion into personal lives." Despite that finding, a parochial, anti-conceptual view of politics predominates among political party officials, politicians and candidates.

For instance, as the Tea Party movement was born in March 2009 discussion groups proliferated around the nation. Grassroots Democrats, Republicans and Independents, candidates for political office, ranking political party officers attended the meetings. So did many activists, bloggers and Tea Party supporters. The discussions tended to revolve around political corruption, excessive spending, budget deficits, the bailouts, government take-overs, and so forth. Grassroots attendees seemed to be looking for something that would tie together all of their concerns.

But when one stated that the growing intrusion into American lives shows that "we must demand a restoration of individual rights," political party officials and political candidates declared that "Voters are turned off by that philosophical stuff." One candidate said, "The only way you can get elected is to talk about fiscal accountability and transparency. Talking about ideas is a waste of time. Philosophical ideas are too abstract. People don't understand them. What they understand is their pocketbook."

Such fatuous remarks reveal the magnitude of the speaker's ignorance. Bookstores are doing a booming business selling books that deal with ideas. For example, "Total sales of Ayn Rand's novels reached 1.1 million in 2009.
. . . Nearly half of those total sales were Atlas Shrugged," a novel that deals with philosophical ideas. During the first quarter of 2010, sales had not slowed. Her non-fiction work, such as the Virtue of Selfishness, is also reaching new highs in sales. Libraries have long wait lists for books that deal with ideas. Bloggers dealing with ideas have good-size followings. Articles posted on the net by columnists who deal with ideas generate hundreds of comments. Talk radio has grown large, with steady audiences. The questions phoned in are predominately thoughtful.

The majority of American voters characteristically have worked hard all their lives to improve themselves financially and intellectually. One does not improve oneself financially and intellectually by reading exclusively the comics, the society page or the tabloids. Americans are looking for ideas.

They know it is not right for government to confiscate their money and give it to those who have not earned it. What idea makes them know that such action is robbery? The right to property. They know that it is not right for government to set salaries. What idea gives substance to that knowledge? The right to life. They know it is not right for government to demand homeowners have a license to sell their home. What idea is behind that? The right to property and liberty.

Rights are the foundation of our Republic and of men's well being. Only the restoration of our rights can stop the descent into collectivism---and it does not matter if you call it socialism, progressivism, fascism or communism, all are expressions of collectivism, the fundamental political principle guiding the Obama government.

The opposite of collectivism is individualism. Morally, individualism is the doctrine that says man has the right to live for his own sake. Politically, it espouses the individual's right to life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Economically, it results in the free-market. Under individualism, men are free to pursue the shape and meaning of their own happiness as long as they do not violate another's rights. Under individualism, men are free to choose the work that interests them, earning their own way, minding their own business, helping those they wish to help. These are some of the aspects of individual rights that need to be discussed, advocated and made the center of a political platform.

The political party that does, will be the winning party in 2010 and in 2012 will sweep the collectivists out of office. The candidates who do, will be statesmen returning this country to the land of freedom it once stood for.

Ideas and Politics

It is not unusual to hear politicians express contempt for philosophical ideas while simultaneously claiming they are Progressives and Pragmatist---as if those words did not give title to volumes of philosophical ideas---each resting upon the most lethal premise in man’s history.

While many Republicans---conservative and liberal alike---steep themselves in social issues of highly charged emotionality, such as abortion, they evade or ignore fundamental ideas. Some fail to distinguish between concretes and fundamentals completely, thus disarming themselves for a battle that requires intellectual clarity and moral certitude.

Fundamental ideas give rise to, make possible and color every concrete with which an individual deals. To evade or ignore them is to invite disaster. That’s what has happened to the Republican Party. They have for too long mouthed the same Democrat pap that we’ve heard scores of times. If the Democrats, for instance, say they want to provide universal health care, the Republicans do not denounce such a flagrant attack on individual rights. Instead they say, “Yes, we do too, but not your way.” On this issue as on every other, the Republicans are on the same page with the Democrats, singing the same tune, using the same chords, merely in a different key.

Some politicians claim that voters are not interested in ideas. This is patently false. The grassroots assuredly are interested in ideas, as witness the avalanche of interest in Ayn Rand’s books---which deal exclusively with the dramatization of ideas. American voters are not indifferent to ideas as the lines at libraries, the sales in bookstores and the explosion of blogs attests. At present they are looking for ideas more eagerly than ever before.

The Republican Party has said that it wants to figure out how to re-invigorate the GOP. They can do it if they throw out collectivist ideas. This will disassociate the party from past mistakes. In lieu of discarded collectivism, the GOP should rally Americans to the restoration of individual rights, the only effective way to counteract the Obama government's collectivist assault on the American people. The restoration of our individual rights protects our freedoms, makes possible limited government, and leads to capitalism.

The grassroots recognizes the validity and importance of the right to life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They understand the connection between their individual rights and their choice of work, keeping what they earn, disposing of their income as they see fit, choosing their own doctor and paying their own way. They are fully aware that when one takes from the producer/earner to give to the non-earner, one is depleting savings. They know that reducing savings reduces investment in productive enterprises, which chokes growth, which reduces the standard of living.

Collectivism holds that the individual exists for the state. For decades Democrats have advocated taking from the earner and giving to the non-earner. They have advocated enforced unionization, enforced medical care, enforced social security, enforced public education, enforced business regulation. Obama’s Administration has crystallized this practice.

The grassroots has been clearly shown the irresponsible spending that blasts through the stratosphere, the disastrous regulations and take-overs of companies, the harassment and intimidation of businessmen, the support of corrupt union leaders against the membership, the appeasement of our enemies and the snubbing of our allies, the attempts at “fishy” censorship, and now, recently, the attempt to shut down free expression on the net. They have been told the topsy-turvy collectivist line that a rich nation is a bad nation, that producers/earners are demonical threats to society, that those who create jobs are exploitative, that dissent is unpatriotic (now, but wasn't during the 1960s), that supporting countries that deserve it is intolerant but kissing thugs and bowing to savage rulers is sensitive diplomacy.

The preceding are all concrete expressions of a fundamental idea: statism. Statism is the culmination of collectivism, the rule of brute force, in which the state is supreme, the individual subservient to the ruler in all respects and instances. Statism is the complete destruction of the individual and his rights.

To stop the Obama Administration’s giddy plunge toward statism, the Republican Party would be foolish---and self-destructive---not to join the grassroots and commit itself to the restoration of individual rights. The GOP could seek no greater re-generation than to re-establish the abstract ideas this country was founded on: individual rights, limited government and capitalism, and their concrete social expression, our constitutional freedoms: freedom of speech, of press, of assembly, of worship, and to keep and bear arms.

Collectivists say might makes right. But it does not. Rights make right. If the Republican Party wants to be a viable political party, they must self-righteously proclaim the practical virtue of individual rights, a moral principle that assures peace and prosperity. Nothing more than this is needed. Nothing short of this will win.

The Bumpy Road to Individualism - Conclusion

By the end of the Italian Renaissance the battle remained horrifically one-sided. Collectivism is the political expression of altruism, i.e., that each man should live for others. Altruism is a known and widely accepted moral code. It has been the foundation of the world's religions for over two thousand years.

Individualism had no explicit moral base. Those who attempted to ground it in the self, or the ego, corrupted the meaning of the self, the ego and individualism. Nietzsche's view, for instance, of the egoist as a destructive brute determined to achieve his own ends without regard for means and indifferent to human misery is the widely accepted view of selfishness, of egoism and of individualism. To change that view, certain crucial questions had to be raised and answered to establish the factual base of the science of ethics, which would give substance to egoism and to individualism. But for over 400 years no one knew the right questions to ask. Meanwhile the battle between implicit individualism and collectivist raged.

In art history, the baroque period (1550 to 1750) follows the Italian Renaissance. In many ways baroque art reflects the same conflicts that troubled the Renaissance. In the visual arts---the swirling drapery and disturbed poses in sculpture, the sometimes overly ornate curving forms in architecture, the clash between so-called "Romanticism" and Classicism in painting---indicated the fermenting undercurrents, which continued to swell without resolution. The same powerful stirrings were also taking place in music and literature.

Given the two hundred years attributed to the baroque, its expression in Italian art was understandably much different from its expression in, say, the art of England or Holland at a later date. Yet a common thread linked them. The philosophical underpinning of the times was in flux and men's actions showed it. It's not surprising, therefore, that the characteristic that defines the essential meaning of the period was agitation---agitation in thought, agitation in action, agitation in values and goals.

Agitation was evident in the long-brewing controversies preceding the Protestant Reformation. But it had nothing to do with individual men's personal relation to their religion. Rather, it was like a family squabble over methodology, a conflict among mystic tribalists who shared the same basic view of man. The individual continued to be viewed as merely an undifferentiated part of a group. Agitation preceded the reign of Elizabeth I (1533-1603) much of which she inherited and resolved to the benefit and glory of England. Nonetheless, the essence of the individual's relationship to the state did not change. He remained a subject, servant to the state.

Agitation colored the exploration and settlement of the New World. Thousands of men were leaving the Old World to make a new life on an uncharted continent. While Church and state forced collectivism upon the New World, agitation continued between the individual and the group in the Old as Dutch financial establishments worked to seed numerous business enterprises struggling to disentangle themselves from the guild system.

Amidst this turmoil John Locke (1632-1704) completed his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It was published in 1690. In the same year his Two Treatises on Civil Government was also published. This, Locke's political philosophy, is among the most crucial works in man's history. Locke argued that all men were equal before the law, that each man had inalienable rights of life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that possession of these rights obligated a man to not violate the rights of others. His work heralded in the Enlightenment in England, which then spread to the continent and across the Atlantic to the New World. There, Locke's ideas were the rock upon which the United States was born. His views comprised the first explicit identification of individual rights. And it turned the collective view of man on its ear.

Politically, the concept of individualism is the doctrine that government exists for the individual and that government's only role is to protect individual rights. Economically, individualism is expressed by laissez-faire capitalism, which entails limited government. Socially, individualism is the recognition that the individual is the primary unit of action. He may choose to cooperate with others, but it is understood that no man can think for another as no man can digest another's food. A man may persuade other men to work for him, to help him realize an idea. But in all cases, each man is an autonomous, sovereign unit of thought and action. Therefore, a particular form of government is required to protect and defend individual rights.

Locke's brilliant achievement and America's Founding Fathers' valiant implementation of his ideas combined to form a government for the people and by the people: a government to serve the individual, to insure individual freedom by protecting individual rights. For the first time in history---for a dazzling but all too brief period---the individual was recognized as the proper center of government. The see-saw between individualism and collectivism began a shaky back and forth teeter with individualism on a slow upswing although still badly weighted by mistaken perceptions.

The upswing was the torrent of productive energy that Locke's ideas unleashed. The United States entered into one of the most extraordinary periods in man's history. For about one hundred years individual rights were protected with little government interference. The result was increasing productivity and prosperity as Americans created the richest nation in history and the most generous people on earth. The benevolence that is the result of freedom achieved through the protection of individual rights vindicated Locke's deep conviction that man by nature was good.

But the Constitution included some grave errors. The errors led to a steady erosion of individual rights. Through those errors individualism was in continual jeopardy.

Although the preamble to the Constitution has no political power, two phrases in it allowed collectivists to gain unjustified power over American citizens. Those two phrases are "We the people" and "promote the general welfare." The first has been interpreted to augment Federal government power, draining state power. The second has been interpreted to justify welfare programs and the Federal government's authority over same.

Both interpretations commit the fallacy of dropping the context of man's rights. If one holds individual rights sovereign "We the people" simply refers to the voluntary agreement of individuals to cooperate for a specific purpose. It is merely a re-statement of the fact that "the people" is composed of individuals. It is not a license to subordinate the individual to the collective.

In a similar way, only by dropping the context can the phrase "promote the general welfare" be used to justify destruction of individual rights. It is precisely the protection of individual rights that promotes the general welfare. "Promoting the general welfare" is merely a re-stating that the government's job is to protect individual rights, not usurp them.

The third error is the so-called commerce clause, Article 1, Section 8, in particular point 3: "The Congress shall have the power . . . to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes . . ." Although many other points in Section 8 permit government intervention in the economy, it was point 3 that allowed collectivists to legislate laws that hamper free enterprise and expand Federal power. Article 1, Section 8 became the battleground for and against increased regulation of business.

Aided by the errors in the U.S. Constitution, European rulers also inspired collectivists' goals. Between 1883 and 1887 Bismark inaugurated the welfare state as a weapon against his enemies. Less than thirty years later, the Federal Reserve in the United States (1913) was established. It was a powerful blow against the rights of bankers and all who dealt with bankers, which meant of course every individual who had an account with a bank, invested in stock or dealt with those who did. Legislating how banks should operate was the collectivists means of controlling the life-blood of the nation.

By 1917 collectivists took over the government of Russia. Over two million peasants were slaughtered to force agrarian collectives. In the cities, the life's work of countless individuals was taken over in the name of the re-distribution of wealth. As Russians were herded together to march in celebration of collectivism's triumph, they were starving---like hundreds of thousands more throughout the Soviet Union.

The collectivist tsunami swept across the European continent. Money was printed by the truckload to fund welfare programs. By 1923 a widespread, exceptionally severe inflationary depression crushed the German people, setting the stage for the rise of German fascism.

In 1929, the United States entered what has become known as the Great Depression, an economic disaster caused by the Federal Reserve's "easy money policies." The manipulation of the money supply without goods and/or services to back the printed dollars resulted in expansion of credit without any backing, installment buying without any concern for repayment and wild speculation in the stock market. Nothing could contain the empty dollars. And nothing did. The economy collapsed.

During the 1930s the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt sunk America deeper into the welfare state. The government interfered more often and more deeply in more businesses and more markets. Collectivism was on a binge, flying high, its praises sung almost everywhere while people suffered and prosperity declined. Nothing seemed able to stop it.

One individual alone rose to challenge collectivism. One individual alone saw the fundamental cause for the continual victories of collectivism and of the inability of individualism to combat it. One individual without allies, without great wealth, without social or political connections saw the missing ingredient that individualism desperately needed to sustain itself and forge a proper foundation for a free society.

In 1934, a book entitled We the Living was published for the first time. It was the work of a young woman who had emigrated from the Soviet Union to become an American citizen. It was published in Italian and Mussolini thought it was an attack on his enemies; so, he permitted its circulation. When someone in his gang observed that the novel was stirring individuals against his regime, he ordered it taken out of circulation. We the Living is a novel showing the destructiveness of all forms of totalitarianism.

In 1943, in the midst of the Second World War, Ayn Rand, the author of We the Living, finally found a publisher for her second novel The Fountainhead. The beginning of a significant turnaround toward individualism was launched. It was a slow beginning. Advertising for The Fountainhead was modest and restrained. Only one critic saw its monumental importance. The novel, dramatizing the value of individualism and the source of creative thought, was made into a movie. It was not highly promoted. Nonetheless, sales of the novel continued and remained steady. In 1958, Miss Rand's masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, was published. Left and right, liberals and conservatives alike, all attacked the book. Altruists/collectivists at root, they saw the threat of Atlas Shrugged.

Nonetheless, the novel found a receptive audience. The audience was comprised largely of those who were NOT politicians, media, or college professors. Interest in Miss Rand's work grew yearly. Today Atlas Shrugged is at the top of the literary marketplace.

Ayn Rand raised and answered basic questions regarding man's moral code. She identified the proper standard of the good and identified the moral code at the base of individualism. It is the ethics of rational self-interest---also known as rational egoism---or as she titled one of her non-fiction works, The Virtue of Selfishness. Miss Rand demonstrated that selfishness is concern with one's own interests, that according to man's nature as a rational, volitional being his interests are shaped by the fundamental values of reason, purpose and self-esteem and that his actions are guided by virtues in keeping with those fundamental values. Rational selfishness is the necessary and essential foundation of capitalism. Laissez-faire capitalism requires the free exercise of one's rights, which is individualism.

Individualism has been given a mighty leg up.

Yet the struggle continues. On the one hand, big government corruption and fiscal irresponsibility are causing many Americans to recognize that collectivism is an effort to enslave them. On the other hand, collectivists are exploiting Americans' present fears and anger by blaming individual businessmen for government's faults and calling for wider government powers.

Beneath this surface, a fundamental, long-range change is taking place. It is real. It is happening. It is seen in several clues. For instance, collectivists' ridicule and insult has replaced substantive argument, showing that their arguments have grown from thin to empty. The eminent collapse of Newsweek, a self-proclaimed socialist magazine, is another clue that collectivism is all but dead. What sustains it is only the moral code of altruism.

The best way to show the manipulative destructiveness of altruism is to advocate the positive benefits and importance of individual rights. The Ayn Rand Institute and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights are engaged in this education process. http://www.aynrand.com/ In addition, a number of informed activists are working in areas of their own interest to counter government's increasing disregard of individual rights.

It's likely that years from now when individualism is taken for granted many will wonder what was all the fuss about. "Of course," they will say in the future, "individualism is the only doctrine proper to man. It could not be otherwise." And they will be right.

LEST WE RETURN: The Rulers--Part I and II.

With the rise of the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt (between c. 5000 and 4000 BCE), men’s social groupings expanded.

Previously, the social groupings of prehistoric man had slowly developed from family to clan to tribe. The advent of the Neolithic Revolution---the invention of farming and animal husbandry---saw a different kind of grouping and a different kind of living arrangement. The building of the first city (Jericho c. 8000 BCE) indicates that the new way of producing and keeping food required closer proximity of men to their farms and animals. Tribes may have started to live together side by side.

In any case, by the time King Menes united the tribes of Egypt (around 3200 BCE) individuals in both Egypt and Mesopotamia were regarded as members of one of two classes: the rulers and the ruled.

Among rulers arose two distinct types that often vied for predominance: those who sought dominion over men’s physical being, the kings, and those who sought dominion over men’s spiritual being, the priests. (The concept "spiritual" is here used throughout as synonymous with "consciousness" unless otherwise noted.)

The kings were those who ruled by might. They were the men of muscle, the men who made others do their biding through cunning and brute physical strength, aided by men of like kind who were promised riches in exchange for their allegiance to the head muscle-man.

The priests, like priests today, were those who ruled through fear and ignorance of nature. They were the equivalent of what other tribal societies came to call witch doctor. But instead of involving themselves with attempting to heal the wounded, they devised cosmologies---myths and fantasies---purporting to explain various natural phenomena.

Among the ruled were all those who produced material goods. These were the thinkers , the producers: the farmers, weavers and builders, including the artist/artisan/craftsman. It was these who kept the rulers alive. They did not know it. They did not know the importance of their work---or its moral meaning .

Part II.

Rulers did not accumulate riches through trade, invention and improvements. They accumulated riches through plunder, annexation and war. Whereupon the ruler declared that he owned all the land under his purview, that his power was absolute, that it was divinely ordained and that therefore he was above the law (This is the source of the notion of today's "eminent domain"). He pronounced himself the final and unquestionable authority on all matters. In effect, he held the power of life and death over every individual within his reach.

Rulers of both church and state dressed in the finest of fabrics---woven and sewn by weavers and seamtresses, i.e. the producers. Their skin was rosy and glowing from much good food---raised and harvested by the producedrs, farmers and livestock folk. They drank from cups in-laid with precious metals and stones, fashioned by skilled artisans, the producers. They commanded and the producers built magnificent tombs, pyramids, ships, chariots, palaces, grand cathedrals and country retreats with artfully landscaped gardens and fountains. Their domiciles were furnished with the finest furniture, decorated with rich tapestries crafted by artisans, the producers. Paintings of exquisite beauty adorned ceilings and walls. Sculptures graced walkways and lined the edges of scented pools of pristine water.

Both kinds of rulers postured before the populace, powerful only by dint of his willingness to destroy and his entourage to obey his commands. He gripped tight a mass of workers who had no idea of individual rights or property, their ignorance held in stasis by means of force.

The money to pay for the materials and to keep the craftsmen/artists alive long enough to do the work is said to have come from the munificence of the princes of church and state. Did it?

In the tribal states of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia everything that was, belonged to the ruler---no matter where it was made, who made it or what effort it cost the maker.

This remained the practice up to around 500 BCE when during the Ancient Greece period an implicit understanding of individualism began to develop, which held sway through much of the rule of Ancient Rome's Republic. During the Medieval Ages, however, the idea of individualism was lost and ownership of everything reverted back once again to the ruler, with the church muscling in for a share of the loot.

In the feudal culture that dominated Europe from the ninth century AD to the middle of the seventeenth century, the king confiscated around thirty-eight percent of every peasant's crop and of every subject's product. On top of that, the church took one-tenth of every individual's annual income.

Centuries later it could be stated with certainty that the rulers needed the art and the craftsmanship---and the nature of that "need" was not simply material comfort. They needed it "to impress themselves and foreigners alike with illusions of power which had little basis in reality."1 Rulers were not merely keen to have fine architecture, paintings and sculpture. They were obsessed with having it. No matter what it cost the peasants they ruled.

"Is there not the story of how Nicomedes, King of Lycia, yearned for a statue of Praxiteles, and exhausted almost all the resources of his people in acquiring it? And did not Attalus believe in the same way being prepared to spend over six thousand sesterces for a painting of Bacchus by Aristides?"2

". . . I must also add that some time later in the year 1060 the circular church of San Giovanni was built on the very same square, opposite the cathedral. It is an amazing thing, and almost unbelievable, that it took two weeks and no more to erect and complete the columns, pilasters, and vaulting of this church, as is recorded in an ancient document in the cathedral's office of works. In the same record, which anyone may consult, it is written that a tax of a penny on every hearth was imposed to raise funds for building the church, although it does not say whether this means a gold or copper coin. And at that time, the record also tells us, there were thirty-four thousand hearths in Pisa."3

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The people who actually build a civilization yet accept the unquestioned authority of state and of church, find themselves the fodder of both. Previous to the Enlightenment, with one exception---that of Ancient Greece---the ruling idea that guided men's actions was the notion that the collective was superior to and more important than the individuals who comprised it. This idea was then and is now dependent upon faith and force.

Civilizations advance by discovering the importance of the individual and by implementing objective law to protect him and his property. Those that never discover the importance of the individual remain ruled by force---such as most of the nations of Africa and Asia. Those that knew it but lose it, revert to savagery---such as those western nations who are every day more tightly embracing collectivism/socialism, including the United States of America.
©2008-2009 Sylvia Bokor. All Rights Reserved.
----------------To be continued
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1. Haskell, Francis, Patrons and Painters, Yale University Press, New Haven/London:1980, p 384. (NB: Haskell refers specifically to the rulers of Baroque Italy but his words are applicable to rulers everywhere.
2. Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of the Artists, Vol. I, Tr: George Bull, Penquin Classics, England: 1965, p 29.
3. Ibid, Vasari, p 43.

End Part I and II
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