In honor of Ayn Rand’s 100th birthday, Edward Hudgins of The Objectivist Center has written a commentary that briefly oultines Rand’s life and influence. Hudgins writes:
A century after her birth, Ayn Rand’s legacy lives on not only in her novels—The Fountainhead (1943), Anthem (1938), We the Living (1936) and Atlas [Shrugged] (1957)—but also in political and cultural ideas that are changing the country.
Read the full article for more…
Writing for the Ayn Rand Institute, Onkar Ghate has published an op-ed titled “The Appeal of Ayn Rand” that examines the eternal appeal of Rand’s ideas, particularly among students. From the article:
The key to Rand’s popularity is that she appeals to the idealism of youth. She wrote in 1969: “There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days–the conviction that ideas matter.” The nature of this conviction? “That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one’s mind matters. And the radiance of that certainty, in the process of growing up, is the best aspect of youth.”
See the full article for additional elucidtation.
The Ayn Rand Institute has published an op-ed, below, arguing that any help for Tsunami victims in Southeast Asia should come from private, not government, coffers.
Is such private fundraising really a practical solution? Consider this: Amazon.com alone has already raised well over $9 million (from 124,000 separate donors) in private funding for the Tsunami victims.
The money will be donated to the American Red Cross, which, according to at least one government source, is the same organization that will receive the initial funding from the U.S. government.
By David Holcberg
As the death toll mounts in the areas hit by Sunday’s tsunami in southern Asia, private organizations and individuals are scrambling to send out money and goods to help the victims. Such help may be entirely proper, especially considering that most of those affected by this tragedy are suffering through no fault of their own.
The United States government, however, should not give any money to help the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government’s to give.
Every cent the government spends comes from taxation. Every dollar the government hands out as foreign aid has to be extorted from an American taxpayer first. Year after year, for decades, the government has forced American taxpayers to provide foreign aid to every type of natural or man-made disaster on the face of the earth: from the Marshall Plan to reconstruct a war-ravaged Europe to the $15 billion recently promised to fight AIDS in Africa to the countless amounts spent to help the victims of earthquakes, fires and floods–from South America to Asia. Even the enemies of the United States were given money extorted from American taxpayers: from the billions given away by Clinton to help the starving North Koreans to the billions given away by Bush to help the blood-thirsty Palestinians under Arafat’s murderous regime.
The question no one asks about our politicians’ “generosity” towards the world’s needy is: By what right? By what right do they take our hard-earned money and give it away?
The reason politicians can get away with doling out money that they have no right to and that does not belong to them is that they have the morality of altruism on their side. According to altruism–the morality that most Americans accept and that politicians exploit for all it’s worth–those who have more have the moral obligation to help those who have less. This is why Americans–the wealthiest people on earth–are expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it. It is Americans’ acceptance of altruism that renders them morally impotent to protest against the confiscation and distribution of their wealth. It is past time to question–and to reject–such a vicious morality that demands that we sacrifice our values instead of holding on to them.
Next time a politician gives away money taken from you to show what a good, compassionate altruist he is, ask yourself: By what right?
UPDATE: More on this subject from Terence Corcoran at Canada’s National Post:
If there’s an emerging lesson in the aftermath of the tsunami, it is this: Beware of aid efforts that must be trumpeted in press releases and hyped at news conferences. The bulk of world relief to tsunami victims, soaring to hundreds of millions of dollars, had been registered by private agencies collecting donations from individuals who sought no public recognition, issued no media release and made no effort to get their names into the papers. It was only after it became obvious thousands, if not millions, of individuals wanted to help that the world’s governments — in Ottawa and Washington and elsewhere — suddenly saw an opportunity. Absurdly, Ottawa announced it would “match” the private donations of individual Canadians — as if Ottawa got the money from some magic fountain behind Parliament Hill rather that from taxes on the same individuals who had already volunteered.
From an article at the Australian reprinting Milton Friedman’s comments in the Hoover Digest:
After World War II, opinion was socialist while practice was free market; currently, opinion is free market while practice is heavily socialist. We have largely won the battle of ideas; we have succeeded in stalling the progress of socialism, but we have not succeeded in reversing its course. We are still far from bringing practice into conformity with opinion. That is the overriding non-defence task for the second Bush term. It will not be an easy task, particularly with Iraq threatening to consume Bush’s political capital.
Keep reading… (Hat-tip to Instapundit.)
Writing for Texas A&M’s The Battalion, op-ed columnist Mike Walters wraps up the semester with a ringing endorsement of freedom in his article “Individual rights make America great,” which includes this remark:
I’d like to congratulate those who read opinion articles and examine their subjects rationally – you are the thinkers of tomorrow. Only you have the power to create a morally successful path for our industries and nation. We face much evil in the world, evil seeking an easy path through life by taking what others have rather than producing it. Worse are those who inadvertently spread evil ideas by failing to examine them critically and spreading them regardless.
As you move on past college and into the world, remember that individual rights are the only things that will bring about a color-blind society, that allows people to keep the money they make, and give to charity if they wish. Individual rights are the only things that preserve the freedom that allows us to seek happiness.
…Followed by a terrific quote from Ayn Rand. See the full article for more.
Writing for the business section of London’s Telegraph, Luke Johnson provides an even-handed discussion of the need for an intellectual framework to guide one’s business endeavors:
It seems odd that there are so few intellectual works that deal with the philosophy of capitalism. Millions of words are written annually on the mechanics of business, but virtually none on the ultimate purpose of it all.
Where is the true justification for the sacrifice and effort? Is the rat race an exercise in futility? In the past 100 years, the profit motive has become the dominant creed, replacing religion, Marxism and the like ? yet there are almost no texts that rationalise why man strives so hard to build enterprises.
Why is it important for those engaged in accumulating wealth to think about the deeper principles underlying their daily work? I believe an understanding of their motivations, and the meaning of our economic and social systems, helps expand the mind and gives a sense of moral value.
After exploring a few other intellectual justifications for the pursuit of success (including those from Christian traditions), he notes Ayn Rand’s contributions:
Ayn Rand, the author of The Fountainhead and inventor of objectivism, was perhaps the foremost exponent of the unfettered philosophy of laissez-faire capitalism. She originated “the concept of man as a heroic being” with “productive achievement as his noblest activity”. Her books and beliefs remain popular today. Eddie Lampert, the Wunderkind behind the recent merger of retailers Sears and Kmart, is apparently an advocate.
See the full article for additional commentary.
An interesting posting to the OWL discussion group by Erik Herbertson, of Sweden:
I have a suggestion for especially those of you who are Americans. When you write about “liberals” of the American variety, i.e. welfare statists, it would be good if you used quotation marks to underscore that it’s a false liberalism. Ayn Rand used to do that. It’s also a point to state, if there’s room for it, the reasons.
In most countries in the world, except apparently in the U.S., the terms “liberal” and “liberalism” can be used in the sense we approve of, namely a position in favour of free markets, individual freedom and limited government.
Sure, “liberalism” can even in Europe (and my country Sweden) be used in the welfare statist meaning, but there’s no problem for me to attach my pro-capitalist, pro-individualist views to the word “liberalism”. The welfare statist variety of liberalism is often called “socialliberalism” in Scandinavia, or “sozialliberalismus” in German-speaking countries.
Free market liberalism sometimes is called neo-liberalism, classical liberalism, old liberalism (confusing for beginners :-)), laissez-faire-liberalism or Manchester liberalism, but also just liberalism or “pure liberalism”.
The Liberal parties throughout the world are not always the same as true liberalism. But in most countries, those parties who call themselves liberal are the most free-market-oriented.
The Liberal Party of Canada and the Liberal Democrats of UK belongs to the left wing of the Liberal International. But in especially the European continent and Eastern Europe, Liberal parties are the parties of low taxes, free markets and personal freedom, even though they are not libertarian (Partito Liberale in Italy is libertarian).
The Estonian Reform Party and Polish Freedom Union have libertarian leanings, and the Costa Rican Movimiento Libertario (libertarian) is a member of the Liberal International.
One can question if it’s wise for free-market-oriented liberals to cooperate with “social liberals” in an International, but I wanted to make a point about the orientation many Liberal parties have, an orientation you wouldn’t even expect from a U.S. Republican.
Even in Canada, there’s the provincial party “B.C. Liberals” (British Columbia), which is separate from the Liberal Party of Canada, and have a policy in favour of free enterprise and lower taxes. Consistent advocates of laissez-faire could question some of its implementations, but it seems that there’s a change in Canada over the meaning of “liberalism”.
In other English-speaking countries like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, “liberalism” is often meant to be pro-capitalism and pro-individualism.
In France, “liberal” is almost always used in the correct way, and therefore the French left use it as a derogatory term :-). Good that the French at least are right about this terminology.
Erik Herbertson, true liberal
Writing for the Ayn Rand Institute, Gary Hull has published an ode to Thanksgiving as “the Producer’s Holiday”:
Thanksgiving celebrates man’s ability to produce. The cornucopia filled with exotic flowers and delicious fruits, the savory turkey with aromatic trimmings, the mouth-watering pies, the colorful decorations–it’s all a testament to the creation of wealth.
Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, because this country was the first to create and to value material abundance. It is America that has been the beacon for anyone wanting to escape from poverty and misery. It is America that generated the unprecedented flood of goods that washed away centuries of privation. It is America, by establishing the precondition of production–political freedom–that was able to unleash the dynamic, productive energy of its citizens.
This should be a source of pride to every self-supporting individual. It is what Thanksgiving is designed to commemorate. But there are those, motivated by hatred for human comfort and happiness, who want to make Thanksgiving into a day of national guilt. We should be ashamed, they say, for consuming a disproportionate share of the world’s food supply. Our affluence, they say, constitutes a depletion of the “planet’s resources.” The building of dams, the use of fossil fuels, the driving of sports utility vehicles–they insist–are cause, not for celebration, but for atonement. What if, they all wail, the rest of the world consumed the way Americans do?
See the full op-ed for additional analysis.
Prominent cultural analyst (and Ayn Rand admirer) Jack Wheeler sounds a note of optimism in his latest discussions of current events. Excerpts are included in the article “‘Clintonian childish perversity’ finally dies,” published at WorldNetDaily:
Dr. Jack Wheeler, whose death-defying adventures span the globe and whose achievements have inspired wide-ranging acclaim, has penned a positive, historically relevant analysis of the election, saying the days of “Clintonian childish perversity” are behind us.
On his unique intelligence website, To the Point, Wheeler analyzes the re-election of President Bush and declares the nation is now on a continuing upward trend of moral decency. […]
“The election of 2004 was the last gasp of the left’s attempt to maintain its stranglehold on American popular culture and moral values,” he writes. “George W. Bush leads a finally-maturing Boomer generation that leaves Clintonian childish perversity behind, with America’s youth demanding clear and decent moral standards. […]”
Longer excerpts are available in the full article at WND.
The Ayn Rand Institute’s Ed Locke offers powerful reminders about the importance of capitalism in his article “The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 15 Years Later,” published at Front Page Magazine:
The 15th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall is today. This event is widely taken to symbolize two things: the demise of Communism, and the global triumph of political freedom and capitalism. Unfortunately, the second has not occurred.
The Soviet Union was certainly an evil empire, with mass slaughter, enslavement and poverty as its only legacy. But the destruction of the bad does not ensure the emergence of the good. When a tyrant is overthrown, he may simply be replaced by another one. In fact, much of world history, from ancient Egypt to modern China and Iran, has followed this very pattern, with rebellions leading only to the supplanting of an old system of despotism with a new one.
See the full article for additional information.
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