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PHILOSOPHY
OF LIBERTYy
philosophy is based on the principle of self-ownership. You own your life. To deny this is to imply that another person has
a higher claim on your life than you do. No other person, or group of persons, owns your life nor do you own the lives of
others. You exist in time: future, present, and past. This is manifest in life, liberty, and the product of your life and
liberty. The exercise of choices over life and liberty is your prosperity. To lose your life is to lose your future. To lose
your liberty is to lose your present. And to lose the product of your life and liberty is to lose the portion of your past
that produced it.
A product of your life and liberty is your property. Property is the fruit of your labor, the
product of your time, energy, and talents. It is that part of nature that you turn to valuable use. And it is the property
of others that is given to you by voluntary exchange and mutual consent. Two people who exchange property voluntarily are
both better off or they wouldn't do it. Only they may rightfully make that decision for themselves.
At times
some people use force or fraud to take from others without willful, voluntary consent. Normally, the initiation of force to
take life is murder, to take liberty is slavery, and to take property is theft. It is the same whether these actions are done
by one person acting alone, by the many acting against a few, or even by officials with fine hats and fancy titles.
You have the right to protect your own life, liberty, and justly acquired property from the forceful aggression of others.
So you may rightfully ask others to help protect you. But you do not have a right to initiate force against the life, liberty,
or property of others. Thus, you have no right to designate some person to initiate force against others on your behalf.
You have a right to seek leaders for yourself, but would have no right to impose rulers on others. No matter how officials
are selected, they are only human beings and they have no rights or claims that are higher than those of any other human beings.
Regardless of the imaginative labels for their behavior or the numbers of people encouraging them, officials have no right
to murder, to enslave, or to steal. You cannot give them any rights that you do not have yourself.
Since you own
your life, you are responsible for your life. You do not rent your life from others who demand your obedience. Nor are you
a slave to others who demand your sacrifice.
You choose your own goals based on your own values. Success and failure
are both the necessary incentives to learn and to grow.
Your action on behalf of others, or their action on behalf
of you, is only virtuous when it is derived from voluntary, mutual consent. For virtue can only exist when there is free choice.
This is the basis of a truly free society. It is not only the most practical and humanitarian foundation for human
action; it is also the most ethical.
Problems that arise from the initiation of force by government have a solution.
The solution is for people of the world to stop asking officials to initiate force on their behalf. Evil does not arise only
from evil people, but also from good people who tolerate the initiation of force as a means to their own ends. In this manner,
good people have empowered evil throughout history.
Having confidence in a free society is to focus on the process
of discovery in the marketplace of values rather than to focus on some imposed vision or goal. Using governmental force to
impose a vision on others is intellectual sloth and typically results in unintended, perverse consequences. Achieving a free
society requires courage to think, to talk, and to act - especially when it is easier to do nothing... Characteristics of Individual Rights The Bill of Rights proclaims that individuals have "rights."
But what does it mean to have a right? Are some rights fundamentally different from others? In the classical liberal tradition,
rights have several characteristics, including the following: Rights Are Relational.
Rights pertain
to the moral responsibilities that people have to one another. In particular, they refer to a zone of sovereignty within which
individuals are entitled to make choices without interference by others. In this way, rights serve as moral side-constraints
on the actions of other people. In a world consisting of only one individual, or in which people never interacted, rights
would not exist in the sense that there would be no one to claim a right against and no one who could interfere with the exercise
of any individual's rights. Rights exist because people do interact in pursuit of their own interests. Rights are also
relational in another sense: They limit the morally permissible actions government may take to interfere with the lives of
individuals who are governed. Rights Imply Obligations. Rights sanction morally
allowable actions. In the process, they create obligations for other people to refrain from preventing those actions. To say
that "Joe has the right to do X" implies all other people have an obligation not to interfere with Joe's doing
X. For example, to say "Joe has a right to build a swing set in his backyard" implies that other people are obliged
not to interfere with Joe's construction of the swing set. Fundamental
Rights Imply Negative Obligations. Joe's right to build a swing set obligates others to stay out of the way. It does
not obligate others to help Joe — by furnishing labor, materials, etc. So, Joes' right creates negative obligations
for others, not positive ones. All fundamental rights imply negative obligations in this way. For example, the right to free
speech implies a (negative) obligation on the part of others not to interfere with your speaking. It does not create the (positive)
obligation to provide you with a platform, a microphone and an audience. The right to freedom of the press implies a (negative)
obligation for others not to interfere with your publishing. It does not create the (positive) obligation to provide you with
newsprint, ink and a printing press. The right to freedom of assembly creates the (negative) obligation for others not to
interfere with your association with others. It does not create the (positive) obligation to furnish you with an assembly
hall. From primary rights (e.g., the rights to life, liberty and property) flow derivative rights. These are new obligations
that arise as people exercise their primary rights. Virtually all rights created through trade, exchange or contract are derivative.
For instance, Joe owns a motorcycle and agrees to let Tom rent it for a period of time. Joe has a right to expect to get his
motorcycle back along with the agreed upon rental fee. Joe's rights entail positive obligations on the part of Tom. Rights are Compossible. Can rights conflict? In the classical liberal conception, a conflict of rights implies a contradiction.
Consider two claims: 1. Joe has the right to do X. 2. Tom has the right to interfere with Joe's doing X. The first sentence
implies that Tom has an obligation not to interfere with Joe's doing X, whereas the second sentence implies that he has
no such obligation. Hence, there is a contradiction. In order to be logically consistent, therefore, rights cannot
conflict; which is to say, they must be compossible. Compossiblility means that each person's rights are compatible with
everyone else having the same rights. This is the feature behind the adage "Your right to act ends at my nose,"
and vice versa. Take the claim that each person has a right to liberty. Compossibility implies that when any one person is
exercising her liberty she is not violating other peoples' right to liberty. This does not mean that people cannot
compete to achieve mutually exclusive goals. It does mean that the competition must be in the context of rights. Put differently,
there may be conflicts among people (e.g., they may be pursuing conflicting goals) but there cannot be conflicts of rights.
Also, the statement that rights are compossible does not imply that there cannot be arguments and disputes about what those
rights are (which is why we have courts of law). But the presumption of a legal hearing is that even though the disputants
may disagree, there are objective, non-contradictory rights for the court to discover. Fundamental
Rights are Inalienable. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson declared that basic rights are inalienable. This
means they cannot be alienated from the individual who holds the rights. They cannot be given away or taken away. They cannot
be bought, sold or traded. They can be violated, however. Joe can give away his swing set or sell it or trade it for some other asset.
Joe can also buy, sell, trade or donate other pieces of property. But he cannot give away, sell or trade away his right to
property as such. Individuals, through consent or contract, may limit their liberty to take specific acts (e.g., under the
terms of a contract); but they may not give up their right to liberty as such. Fundamental
Rights Do Not Come from Government. Not only do rights not get their legitimacy from government, but — as the Declaration of Independence
so eloquently states — it's the other way around. Government gets its legitimacy from the existence of rights. In
the view of Locke, Jefferson and others, rational, moral people form governments for the express purpose of protecting rights.
In the Second Treatise on Government, Locke argued that legitimate governments are, in fact, instituted to facilitate the
more effective protection or enforcement of these rights, and may not abrogate an individual's natural rights.2 In natural rights
theories, legitimate governments are created by consent, but fundamental rights are not grounded in consent. 2 See, for example, John Locke, Second Treatise on Government
(1952)
Sections 85, 88, 94 and Chapter IX (among other places) for statements concerning the role of government, and Sections 93,
131 and Chapters XI and XIX (among other places) for statements concerning the limitations on government power and what can
be done when a government violates its trust. Following standard practice, citations of Locke are to section or chapter numbers.
.Substantive Rights versus Police Powers of the State
In order to prevent crime, catch and punish criminals, settle disputes and carry out other duties necessary
to protect rights, every government will necessarily exercise police powers — powers that are generally denied to ordinary
citizens. ...In the classical liberal world, people are free to pursue their own interests so long as they do not violate the
rights of others. They are free to trade with others or not to trade. They are free to associate with others or not to associate.
Since fundamental, substantive rights create negative obligations, one respects another's rights by not interfering with
the exercise of those rights. Interference generally consists of force, the threat of force or fraud (which is interpreted
to be an indirect form of force). The classical liberal world, therefore, is a peaceful world. All interactions are voluntary.
A world in which all rights are respected is a world without force or fraud.3 3 This is not the world the Founding
Fathers created. It is instead a vision or ideal that guided much of what they did in forming a government. Moreover, that
ideal became more fully developed in the 19th century by classical liberals who Rights
versus Needs To appreciate the classical liberal concept of individual rights, it is as important to understand what
is being rejected as it is to understand what is being asserted. To say that individuals have the right to pursue their own
happiness implies that they are not obliged to pursue the happiness of others. Put differently, the right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness implies that people are not obligated to serve the needs, concerns, wishes and wants of others.
This doesn't mean that everyone has to be selfish. It does imply that everyone has a right to be selfish. In the
classical liberal world, need is not a claim. That is, the needs, wishes, wants, feelings and desires of others are not a
claim against your mind, body or property. At the time the Declaration of Independence was written, this meant that the American
colonists had the right to pursue their own interests, independent of the needs of King George and the British Empire. In
time, the concept was broadened — affirming each individual's right to pursue his or her own interest, despite the
existence of unmet needs somewhere on the planet or even next door. The idea that need is not a claim applies to procedural
rights as well as substantive rights. Tom may feel safer if all suspicious-looking people are routinely seized and searched.
But in the world of classical liberalism, Tom's need to feel safe is not a justification for initiating force against
all suspicious-looking people. The Collectivist Notion of Rights It is worth noting
that all forms of collectivism in the 20th century rejected this classical notion of rights and all asserted in their own
way that need is a claim. For the communists, the needs of the class (proletariat) were a claim against every individual.
For the Nazis, the needs of the race were a claim. For fascists (Italian-style) and for the architects of the welfare state,
the needs of society as a whole were a claim. Since in all these systems the state is the personification of the class, the
race, society as a whole, etc., all these ideologies imply that, to one degree or another, individuals have an obligation
to live for the state. Despite the fact that 20th century collectivists opposed the classical liberal concept of rights,
very rarely did they attack the notion of "rights" as such. Instead, they often tried to redefine the concept of
"right" in a way that virtually eviscerated any meaningful notion of liberty. For example, in his 1944 State of
the Union Address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for a "second Bill of Rights," which included the following:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation. The right
to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his
products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living. The right of every businessman, large and
small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad. The
right of every family to a decent home. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy
good health. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.
The right to a good education. Note that these rights are very different from the rights Locke, Jefferson and the
Founding Fathers had in mind. Among the characteristics of Roosevelt's rights are the following: 1. They imply positive
obligations on the part of others. When Roosevelt says people have the right to "earn enough to provide adequate food,
clothing and recreation," he does not mean that people have the right to work hard (extra hours if necessary) to earn
money to buy what they need. Instead, he means that other people (including potential employers, consumers, other workers,
etc.) have an obligation to insure each worker's wage is sufficiently high. Similarly "the right of every farmer
to ... a decent living" does not mean farmers have the right to work the land and produce sufficient output. Instead
it means others are obliged to act in a way that insures the farmer's minimum income. In general, your "right to
a useful...job" implies others are obligated to provide that job if you can't find one on your own. Your "right
... to a decent home" implies others are obligated to provide you with a home if you cannot otherwise obtain one. And
so forth. 2. Each
individual's positive obligations are notoriously unclear. Consider all of the ways in which you could potentially violate
a farmer's "right" to a decent income. You might buy groceries on sale, or at a discount outlet, instead of
paying a higher price. You might buy cheaper substitute products (corn instead of soybeans or vice versa). You might grow
some crops in your own backyard instead of buying items at the supermarket. You might buy some land and become a farmer yourself
— thereby increasing output and depressing overall market prices. You might change your diet and not buy the farmer's
output at all. Clearly the list is almost endless, as is the list of things you might do to increase the farmer's income.
One thing is certain: From the statement that a farmer has a "right to a decent income" there is no way for any
of us to determine what precisely our positive obligations are. 3. As a practical matter, only government
action could insure such rights. Even if you could figure out how your actions might help the farmer, you would by no means
be home free. In Roosevelt's view, everyone has the right to earn a decent income. So in the very act of helping the farmer,
you might be hurting someone else. Whenever you buy from A at the expense of B, you help the employees of A at the expense
of the employees of B — and vice versa. Indeed, every transaction you make — every act of buying and every act
of selling — potentially violates one of Roosevelt's "rights." As a practical matter, therefore, Roosevelt's
rights could be observed only if all of us ceded much of our liberty to make economic decisions to the government. And the
amount of power that would have to be ceded would be enormous. 4. They imply virtually unlimited government power with respect to the economy.
Incredibly
vague rights imply incredibly vague obligations, and, if nothing else, all of Roosevelt's rights are very, very vague.
Hence if government is to act as the agent for all of us, the potential scope for action would be enormous. In fact, Roosevelt
believed that there was no economic decision — no act of buying or selling or producing — that government should
not be able to regulate. Thus in implementing Roosevelt's second Bill of Rights one would at the same time be eliminating
all of the economic rights that classical liberals thought people had. That is, implementation of Roosevelt's scheme
would eliminate the right of every individual to pursue his own happiness — at least in the marketplace. Historical
note: It's hard to exaggerate how truly collectivist Roosevelt's vision was. At his behest, Congress passed the National
Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which attempted to regulate the entire economy, based on the Italian fascist model. In each
industry, management and labor were ordered to collude to set prices, wages, output, etc. (acts that today would be a criminal
violation of the anti-trust law). So intrusive were these regulations that what in retrospect seems like an incredibly silly
regulation made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which responded by declaring the entire scheme unconstitutional.4 4 The National Industrial Recovery
Act (NIRA), passed in 1933, established price and wage codes with the intent of stimulating economic recovery during the Great
Depression. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the NIRA, when it ruled in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States
(1935)
(often referred to as the "sick chicken" case) that the Act encroached on states' rights and gave the executive
branch powers reserved for the legislature. 5 A number of contemporary scholars have gone to great lengths to provide defenses of or
argument for rights, rather than treating rights or liberty as fundamental and not needing justification. See, for example,
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 1974); A. John Simmons, The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1992); Ellen Frankel Paul, Property Rights and Eminent Domain (Somerset, N.J.: Transaction Publishers,
1987); Tibor R. Machan, Individuals and Their Rights (Peru, Ill.: Open Court Pub. Co., 1989). Roosevelt was among
the most collectivist (anti-individual rights) president the United States has ever had. And not just in the economic realm.
Although Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson before him had suspended constitutional rights in the time of war, Roosevelt went
further than any president before or since. On his orders Japanese Americans were rounded up and forced into detention camps
(for no other reason than the fact that they were of Japanese ancestry) for the duration of World War II. The Source of Rights Where do rights come from? How can they be defended? The Founding Fathers believed
that fundamental, substantive rights come from nature. Hence the term, "natural rights." But they also relied on
other types of reasoning to defend both substantive and procedural rights, including utilitarianism, common law and social
contract theory.5
Nature as a Source of Rights. Rights as moral (and subsequently) legal
claims limiting government and individual actions taken against an individual or for enforcement of certain claims arose first
in the natural rights tradition in philosophy. Philosophers Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Samuel von Pufendorf (1632–1694)
and, most famously, John Locke (1632–1704) argued that humans have certain fundamental rights (e.g., to life, liberty
and property). These ideas clearly influenced our Founding Fathers and are reflected in the Declaration of Independence and
other documents. While early theorists, including Locke, believed that God granted humans these rights, all of them argued
that, even absent God, humans had rights and that they could be discovered by using the human capacity for reason to examine
the natural laws of the universe. The argument from natural rights is appealing when applied to broad categories of substantive,
fundamental rights, such as the right to life, liberty and property. It is easy to see how natural rights 9 theory conforms to
the substantive rights listed in the Bill of Rights including the areas of speech, religion, assembly, etc. But what about
the procedural rights? On a natural rights theory, procedural rights or subsets of rights and restrictions upon government
action are chosen on the basis of how well they protect the fundamental rights that government was established to protect.
Utility as a Source of Rights. A second philosophical line of argument used to
ground rights, and recognized by the Constitution's writers, is the argument from utility. On this view certain rights
are vital because they create the conditions under which happiness, or the general state of welfare, is maximized. And because
most individuals are the best judge of their own needs, wants, desires and values, the sum of individual (and cumulatively)
social welfare is likely to be maximized when people are free to make their own decisions rather than have those decisions
made by someone else. Thus, in order to secure human happiness and well-being, it is necessary to create a sphere of personal
autonomy within which each individual's personal judgment concerning what he or she wishes to do is paramount and cannot
be legitimately interfered with by either other individuals or by governments, even for that person's own good. Theorists as far
back as Locke recognized a utilitarian argument for rights. For example, in arguing for property rights, Locke observed that
by allowing people to remove property from the commons and make it their own, the effort they put into improving their property
would produce benefits to society as a whole. The Common Law as a Source of Rights.
A
third source of rights, closely tied to the natural rights view and known and noted by the Founders, was the common law. In
general the law can be divided into two broad categories, the public law and private or common law. Public laws, created by
legislative bodies, consist of statutes based on constitutional strictures. Private law, on the other hand, historically evolved
as a result of court rulings or judicial determinations in the areas of property, contract and tort law. "Common law"
is a label used to describe the ancient legal process of discovering and delineating the law on a case-by-case basis. Historically,
common law judges did not see themselves as creating law so much as discovering it. They subscribed to natural law doctrine
whereby "there are natural rules of conduct inherent in humanity itself, most easily discovered by the evolution of customs
of dealing. The job of the common law judge was to look to custom in an effort to discern the law that already existed and
then render rulings based upon it.6 Over time the notion evolved that similar cases should be decided similarly and the concept of stare decisis was born.7 6 Marlow H. Green,
"Common Law, Property Rights & the Environment: Analysis of Historical Developments & a Model for the Future,"
Unpublished Manuscript, Political Economy Research Center, 1995, page 3. 7 "Stare decisis" literally translates as "to
stand by decided matters." The phrase "stare decisis" is itself an abbreviation of the Latin phrase "stare
decisis et non quieta mover" which translates as "to stand by decisions and not to disturb settled matters."
What the doctrine of precedent declares is that cases must be decided the same way when their material facts are the same.
Paul Perell, "Stare Decisis and Techniques of Legal Reasoning and Legal Argument," Legal Research Update 11-21, 1987. pages 1-2.
Although the doctrine of stare decisis does not prevent reexamining and, if need be, overruling prior decisions, "It
is . . . a fundamental jurisprudential policy that prior applicable precedent usually must be followed even though the case,
if considered anew, might be decided differently by the current justices. This policy . . . 'is based on the assumption
that certainty, predictability and stability in the law are the major objectives of the legal system; i.e., that parties should
be able to regulate their conduct and enter into 10 relationships with reasonable assurance of the governing
rules of law.'" (Moradi-Shalal v.Fireman's Fund Ins. Companies (1988) 46 Cal.3d 287, 296. http://lectlaw.com/def2/s065.htm)
8 As opposed to the common law, public or legislatively created law may be characterized as one group of
individuals creating rules that govern others and sometimes themselves as well. This might be unobjectionable if the first
groups interests were coextensive with the interests of everyone, but this is not often, if ever, the case. Rather, public
law represents the interests of some groups too strongly and others too weakly, with rent-creating and rent-seeking rather
than an equitable distribution of the benefits and burdens of social life being the norm. 9 Richard Posner, Economic Analysis of Law, New York: Aspen Law
& Business, 1998. 10 John C. Goodman, "An Economic Theory of the Evolution of Common Law," Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 7, 1978, page
393. 11 See Hugo M. Mialon and Paul H. Rubin, "An Economic Analysis of the Conflict Between the Patriot
Act and Civil Liberty," NCPA's Debate Central Web site, online at http://www.debate-central.org/topics /2005/LINKS/
economic.html Until the latter part of the 19th century, individuals used three bodies of the common law (e.g., trespass,
tort and riparian law) to quite good effect.8 It is easy to see why the Constitution's authors were supportive of the common law. Its development
is closely tied to recognition of the rights that they cherished. The common law is connected to the classical liberal analysis
of natural rights to life, liberty and property. Note that although the common law approach and the utilitarian
approach to individuals' rights start with very different premises, theorists such as Richard Posner9, Goodman10 and Rubin11 have argued that both approaches
often arrive at the same conclusions. Social Contract as a Source of
Rights. In writing the Constitution, its authors were also aware of and profoundly influenced by social contract theory and
its relation to individual rights. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that legitimate government is founded on a social
contract between subjects (who promise to obey the sovereign) and the sovereign (who in return for their obedience promises
to protect them from crime and foreign aggression). Locke, whose views had more direct influence on the founders, construed
the contract as between the members of society who mutually promise to forego certain freedoms that they could rightfully
exercise in the state of nature in exchange for security provided by a government instituted by the contract. Both Hobbes,
in a very limited sense, and Locke argued that certain citizens retained certain rights even against government action. Once
the contract is instituted and the government becomes established, it is expected to set up certain procedural rights and
safeguards (derivative rights) to secure individuals' basic rights from violation whether by third parties or the government
itself. The
basic insight of social contract theory is that government gains its legitimacy from the consent of the governed — people
who have the right to form a political compact. The compact itself creates obligations and powers for both the governed and
the governors. While no government ever arose from an actual social contract, social contract theory was developed as a way
of both justifying obedience to the government by the governed — and placing justified limits on the government. On
this view, governments are justified to the extent that they protect rights and unjustified when they either fail to persistently
protect individuals from other persons violating their fundamental rights or when the government itself oversteps its legitimate
authority and begin to violate individual rights. 11 More recently, John Rawls, among other philosophers, has brought new life
to social contract theory. Rather than viewing rights as gifts from government or from God, or basing rights on utility or
on principles that could be divined by applying reason to a study of natural law, Rawls argues for a social contract as the
basis of rights. This is not an actual contract that people sign. Instead, it is a hypothetical agreement that rational
people would agree to if they knew they were going to have to live under the agreement, but did not know what their individual
positions were going to be. In real life, each of us has assets and liabilities, including intelligence, strength, health,
income, wealth, family relations, etc. With this knowledge each of us would be inclined to choose social institutions advantageous
to us. But Rawls asks us to imagine we are standing behind a "veil of ignorance." That is, we know we are going
to be born into a world and be one of its people — but we don't know which one so we have to choose to institutions
"position blind," without knowing which person we will be. Rawls and others have argued that in an original
position, absent personal biases or prejudices, rational people would conclude that basic political institutions are just
if and only if each person has an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with similar liberty for all.
Seen in this light, the social contract position is a different way of reasoning toward people having fundamental rights to
life and liberty — with compossibility built in. What Rights AreWhat does it mean
to have rights? A right is an absolute political claim. If you have right to some land, other people ought to permit you to
have it. If you have a right to vote, nobody should prevent you from voting. Rights are political claims because they pertain
to what the law can or can’t force you to do, and what it can or can’t force others to do for
you. How can you tell a pseudo-right from a real one? In fact, rights are principles. Properly
understood, they are objective moral principles that provide the foundation for a political-legal order. No law should violate
rights. Rights are “self-evident” and “unalienable” because they are derived from facts about human
nature. They are principles defining the fundamental freedoms and responsibilities that people need to have in society, if
we are to live and flourish. Rights pertain to individuals, not groups. They derive from the basic nature of each
individual human. So, they do not pertain directly at the “group” level of, say, country, tribe, religion, or
race, because all those groupings are made up of individuals. Individuals can change the groups they belong to, but the groups
can’t make do without individuals. Most fundamentally, it is individuals who think, act, and choose, not groups. Moral
responsibility lies within individuals first, and with groups only by aggregation. It is individuals who live and die, suffer
or achieve happiness. Find a happy club, town, office, or school, and you’ll find happy individuals there. Life,
Liberty, and the Pursuit of HappinessAyn Rand was not the first, nor the last, person to understand the meaning
of individual rights. Individual rights are a basic thread in classical liberalism and libertarianism. But Rand was rights’
clearest, most passionate and most systematic explicator. Following and expanding on the arguments of John Locke, Rand, like
the Founders, understood that individual rights were unitary: they identify aspects of the freedom one needs to act, if one
is to live in harmony with others. The right to liberty is the right to be free to act as one chooses. Thus
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is not a well-meaning but vacuous bromide. It is, in fact, a pretty
precise specification. The right to life is the right not to be killed. It is the right not to be injured or harmed in one’s
body. The right to liberty is the right to be free to act as one chooses. This is crucial to one’s life because it is
through one’s productive work that one gains the goods one needs to maintain one’s life. The right to the pursuit
of happiness is the right to aim for independent goals. This is what seeking happiness consists in, and to succeed in being
happy is to succeed in living. PropertyIn 1774, the Continental Congress summarized the three basic rights
as “life, liberty, and property” in their Declaration of Colonial Rights. And well they should have, because without
the right to property, no right is worth all that much. If you have the “right” to your life, but not the right
to your own food, you won’t live long. If you have the “right” to liberty, but are not free to create and
own things, then your choices won’t do you much good. And good luck pursuing happiness if “happiness” is
misunderstood to be totally disconnected from any physical things you might take joy in making; or want for their own sake;
or need as means to a valued goal. If you have the “right” to your life, but not the right
to your own food, you won’t live long. Indeed, what is freedom of speech, if you have no right to own a press,
or own a home or hall where you can speak to others, or to own the means of transmitting your ideas? Such is the travesty
of rights-talk today that while all bow before the words “freedom of speech,” the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act
of 2002 (also known as the McCain-Feingold bill) has made it illegal for most citizens to spend their own money to circulate
a political message, beyond certain very narrowly set limits. The right to property is the basis of industrial civilization.
It allows us to live in a society based on trade, where the exchanges we have are by mutual consent. Property is the basis
of a positive sum, “win-win” society, because if you have a right to your property you gain from every purchase
you make or contract you sign—or at least, it is your choice whether to take part or not in such ventures, and you remain
uniquely responsible for yourself. Freedom from ForceThe three or four basic rights-in-one (or more: subdivide
as needed) are rights to freedom to act. They identify a range of freedom one would have even if no other people
were around. Indeed, if you lived life as a 21st-century Robinson Crusoe, you would have total freedom to think and act, and
you could hold and keep any goods you could find or make. However, we are social animals. We can benefit so much from being
in society that only the worst kind of community could drive us to try to live alone. But the point remains: the individual
rights of life, happiness, liberty, and property preserve for you in the social context the freedom and responsibility that
is yours in nature. And they deny you only the phony “rights” you would never have on your own: to kill and injure
others, to take from others, or to imprison or enslave others. In society, individual rights identify
areas of freedom that everyone can enjoy equally. Thus, in society, individual rights identify areas of freedom
that everyone can enjoy equally. The obligations they impose on others are negative: to not interfere, to not coerce anyone.
This is the basic principle that unifies all the individual liberty rights; it is the basic principle of a society of traders. Ayn Rand stated this unifying principle behind rights in the clearest
terms in “This is John Galt Speaking” in Atlas Shrugged : Whatever may be open to disagreement, there
is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long
as men desire to live together, no man my initiate—do you hear me? No man may start—the use
of physical force against others. It is physical force to assault or murder someone. It is physical force to restrain
a person and deprive him of his liberty. Likewise, it is physical force that you must use to cut a person off from the things
that will make him happy. It takes physical force to deprive someone unjustly of his property. Notice that respecting
individual rights is not pacifism. To respect rights is never to initiate force against others; to defend rights often requires
that we use force against those who, by attacking or robbing us, show their contempt for our freedom. There
are harms people can do to each other that don’t involve force. But the difference is this: force hits at one’s
very ability to live, while other harms are more psychological or contextual. It hurts, for example, to have your heart broken
by a lover who betrays you. Yet, if you retain your liberty you can pick up the pieces, recover, and seek new hope for love. Many
economic harms don’t involve the initiation of force. It’s horrible to lose your job, for instance, but if all
that happens is that you are fired, or your employer collapses, you retain your liberty. In that case, you can put your skills
to work supporting yourself. And as long as others retain their liberty, you can offer them your talents and productive
ability, looking for a new win-win position. And of course liberty, especially the freedom to own and use property, gives
everyone strong reasons to seek out waste and lost opportunities, and to find new and ever better ways of producing the goods
we need. This expands opportunity and wealth for everyone. It’s no accident that the societies with the most economic
freedom—like Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the U.S.—are also the richest, with the lowest unemployment
rates. Rights vs. Pseudo-rightsSadly, since the rise of socialism and the “progressive”
Left early in the twentieth century, the language of rights has become contaminated with a nearly endless wish-list of worthy-sounding
goals. There is nowhere better to start than the “Four Freedoms” championed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and honored
in the United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” The language of
rights has become contaminated with a nearly endless wish-list of worthy-sounding goals. The “Four Freedoms”
are: 1) freedom of speech and expression, 2) freedom of religion, 3) freedom from want, and 4) freedom from fear. The first
pair are extensions of the basic liberty rights: if you have liberty of person and property, then surely you have the freedom
to hold whatever beliefs you care to and to communicate whatever you are willing and able to. But the second pair cannot be
rights at all. To be alive is to have needs and to always be able to benefit from something more. Only the dead are truly
free from want. Of course, Roosevelt meant by “freedom from want” that somehow people have a right to
some basic sustenance, shelter, and some other preferred list of “basic goods.” But what about the people who
must provide these things? They must suffer unjust taxation, conscription, or regulatory exaction—to force them to produce
and distribute the “basic goods.” And apparently, once they have received the “basic goods,”
people are no longer supposed to feel fear. Only a very poor student of human psychology could make such an assumption. People’s
emotions follow largely from what they believe and value. So fear can no more be eliminated from life than can value and belief.
In Roosevelt’s Promised Land, will students fear no test results? Will marketers fear no shortfall in sales? Will presidential
candidates never again fear the results from Florida? Will all dogs be muzzled so that no child feels fear at a bark? A so-called
“right” isn’t worth the name if it consists in stealing the freedom of others. But it kills clear thinking
completely to claim as a “right” that which could never exist. It is simple to tell a pseudo-right from
a real one. Ask: what initiation of force is involved in violating this right? And: who must act to enjoy this right? If force
must be initiated by, or on the part of, the rights-holder, it is a pseudo-right. If others, not the rights-holder, must do
the work for the rights-holder to enjoy his “freedom,” it is no freedom at all. Rights and GovernanceTo
read the press or study politics today, one might think that government was a special social organization with the unique
power to express the will of the people. But in fact, government is the organization which controls the guns. It is government
which sets the effective rules controlling the use of force within its jurisdiction. These rules are the law. It is the law
which determines what freedoms one has in practice, and what actions are subject to reprisal by government forces like the
police and the military. Government is the organization which controls the guns. Rights
are foundational to any liberal system of government. Cementing rights principles into the basic law of the land is the only
way to ensure that the law never encroaches on our natural and proper freedoms. The degree to which the law respects and defends
rights is our best measure of the amount of freedom a government allows. No human institution should exist except to promote
human life and happiness. This applies with especial urgency to governments, because their coercive powers have traditionally
been abused to rob, kill, and enslave. The worst crimes against humanity have been perpetrated by governments or groups fighting
to become governments: consider the Nazi Holocaust, or the killing fields of Cambodia, or the Taliban misrule in Afghanistan.
By contrast, the countries most propitious to life, whose populations have the longest average life expectancies, tend to
be those that come closest to fully respecting the objective individual rights. It is as urgent today as it ever
was that our governments recognize and respect our rights. The freedom we need to live and be happy, the freedom that modern
civilization arose from and depends on, is under pressure from all sides. Conservative factions on the right demand the government
curtail freedom of conscience, and insist that the state promote faith in God. Interest groups clamor for economic regulations
and subsidies to support their jobs or pet projects—and to hell with the rest of the country that will have to pay for
it. Leftists demand more and great, free goodies—subsidized health care, subsidized food, subsidized green technologies,
subsidized housing. Never mind who is to pay for it. Populists demand restraints on trade. Environmentalists want bans on
using land. Self-proclaimed defenders of “democracy” work to make it harder and harder for outsiders to organize
politically, and easier for office holders to avoid serious election-year challenges. Against this tide of pragmatism
and special pleading stands our real need for freedom. The individual rights of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of
happiness are, when properly understood, the standard by which judge our government, and the ideal toward which reform should
aim. Freedom, Achievement, Individualism, Reason: ObjectivismBy
kira Created 04/05/2011 - 11:01 Freedom, Achievement,
Individualism, Reason: Objectivism The most essential aspects of Objectivism can be expressed in these four basic
values. December 2004 -- "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being,
with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as
his only absolute." —Ayn Rand , Appendix to Atlas Shrugged . Objectivism is the philosophy of rational individualism founded by Ayn Rand (1905-82). In novels such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged , Rand dramatized her ideal man, the producer who lives by his
own effort and does not give or receive the undeserved, who honors achievement and rejects envy. Rand laid out the details
of her worldview in nonfiction books such as The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and
The Romantic Manifesto. Objectivism identifies the principles behind living a happy, thriving,
free life. In practical terms, Objectivism is a philosophy that identifies the principles behind
living a happy, thriving, free life. To do this, Objectivism addresses the major questions of religion and philosophy
in every branch, from the most basic theory of reality to the nature of knowledge and the purpose of art. Every principle
of Objectivism locks up logically with every other, and all of them are rooted in the facts of reality we know through
science and common sense. The elements of Objectivism do not fit together because Rand or anyone wants them to: They
fit together because they have to. The most essential aspects of Objectivism can be expressed in four basic values: freedom, achievement,
individualism, and reason. To understand Objectivism as a system, one needs to grasp what these values
are and how they fit together.
FreedomAyn Rand described herself as a "radical for capitalism."
Objectivists see capitalism not simply as a system of money exchange but as the political system based on the principle that
each person has the right to his own life—i.e., the right to live free from force. Objectivists are for laissez-faire
capitalism, in which the state is separated from business activity just as today in America it is separated from any church.
Under laissez-faire, no one may force you to work in any manner other than what you choose; no one may take your property
by force; no one may interfere by force with what you say or do on private property. No corporation is insulated from competition,
and no one has greater rights under the law than you as an individual. You are robustly free, unless and until you yourself
initiate the use of force. Laissez-faire is the system of individual responsibility and of justice for each individual. Objectivism envisions a radical reduction in the size of government. It
envisions a country in which customers—not the government—regulate product quality by their choices to buy or
not buy. It envisions a country in which doctors—not the government—decide what services to offer, to what patients,
and at what prices. It envisions a country in which individuals are responsible for saving for retirement—their own
lives are at stake, after all; it's not the government's business. It envisions a society in which people have the
right to choose whatever consensual sexual relationships they like and in which people have the responsibility to live with
the consequences of their choices—your sex life is definitely not the government's business. But then,
what is the government's business? First and foremost, it is to protect our freedom. We need government to provide a military
defense against foreign threats. We need it to provide police protection against domestic threats. And we need it, most importantly,
to provide and enforce a system of objectively defined laws. The rule of law is indispensable if we are to enjoy the freedom
to make and enforce contracts, to form voluntary associations like firms and clubs, and to live secure from the threat of
capricious changes in the ground rules. The root of a free government is its respect for individual
rights. Today's bloated, unrestrained regimes—from brutal dictatorships to ever-expanding welfare/regulatory
states—fulfill their proper functions poorly or not at all, and they restrict our liberty unnecessarily. As they continue
to metastasize, these cancerous governments pose a profound threat to free choice, social diversity, technological progress,
and economic prosperity. Objectivism , by contrast, advocates a small but potent government, one
that promotes freedom abroad and does everything necessary to enable freedom at home—and strays not an inch from its
appointed role. In the West today, governments universally receive their popular legitimacy from the fact that their
leadership is selected by vote. This mistakes the real basis of governmental legitimacy. Democratic elections are an effective
means of choosing a government. But elections do not give leaders carte blanche. Government's fundamental purpose is not
defined by the whims of the majority on any given issue, but by the objective requirements of individual freedom. The root
of a free government, then, is its respect for individual rights. The measure of whether a government is legitimate or not
fundamentally boils down to the degree to which it respects the rights of its citizens to life, liberty, property, and the
pursuit of happiness.
AchievementObjectivists
are radicals for capitalism because we see capitalism as an "unknown ideal." Capitalism is not a mere "necessary
evil"; it is not, as some would say, a system of short-sighted greed and crass "materialism"; it is emphatically
not, as the radical Left would have it, a system of "oppression." No, capitalism implemented in its pure form is
a system dedicated to objective law and principled respect for the rights of individuals, under which mankind would be liberated
to reach its greatest heights and live the finest lives. It is the moral way to organize a society. But it can be
moral only to a worldview that prizes achievement. In an Ayn Rand novel, the heroes are not warriors or saints. They are businesspeople,
architects, artists, scholars, scientists, and engineers: the people whose achievements have built our civilization. Objectivism does not admire self-sacrifice or self-destruction. It admires
creation, production, and the achievement of happiness. Objectivism rejects envy and sees the lowest villainy in those who
hate the excellent, denigrate the achieving, pooh-pooh the creative, or sneer at the productive. Achievement is
the leitmotif of the Objectivist moral vision. Philosophically, this is because Objectivism sees the basis of value as such—in other words, the basis
of right and wrong—in the nature of human life. As Ayn Rand wrote in The Virtue of Selfishness, “The standard
of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges good or evil—is man's life, or:
that which is required for man's survival qua man.” If one's life is the standard of value, then to
work for one's bread and shelter is a morally worthy act. To strive for joy is morally admirable. To be as effective,
as productive, and as brilliant as one can be is truly, undeniably morally admirable. But this ethic of achievement
is not a morality of devil-take-the-hindmost. Everyone is capable of a life of achievement based on the standard of his or
her own skills, background, and abilities. Neither is it an ethic of live-for-the-moment. To live a full life as a human being
means, as Aristotle taught, to live a life of virtue. Objectivism honors moral integrity and the development of moral character
as great achievements in themselves. It advocates a proud approach to life that seeks to have and to be all that one can.
The moral standard of man's life implies commitments to virtues such as honesty, productivity, and independence of mind.
It implies a commitment to dealing with others justly, neither giving nor receiving the undeserved. Proud, independent, and
exalted: that is the Objectivist vision of man. Objectivism admires creation, production, and the achievement of happiness. Enemies
of capitalism attack the inequality of results that comes from freedom. Freedom, after all, is freedom to succeed—and
freedom to fail. It is freedom to employ one's talents and skills—and freedom to misuse them. Under capitalism,
some will be richer than others, some will be wiser than others, some will be more talented than others, and some will have
more fun than others. This is nothing for which capitalism need apologize. Anyone who truly prizes achievement should want
to see great new businesses, wonderful buildings, flourishing art, and expanding science. Anyone who truly appreciates the
moral equality of each human life should see that each life deserves to flourish in its own different way and by its own different
means. Without profound reverence for human achievement, what becomes of a commitment to freedom? Today in American
politics, the Right promotes tax cuts for rich and poor on the basis of fairness: It is rarely mentioned that the rich have
a moral right to their profits. So the egalitarian Left decries "giveaways to the rich." Where in our culture are
the voices who see the heroism required for business success and who do not equate poverty, suffering, and failure with virtue? Objectivists
value the achievement of wealth as much as we value artistic or scientific brilliance, because we know that wealth, like art
and science, is created by human effort and fulfills vital human needs. Ayn Rand declared that productive work is the "central value"
of man's life, and productivity in pursuit of a career is a cardinal virtue of her system, because through our work we
support our lives and remake the world in the image of our values. People have a moral right to their earnings and deserve
to be lauded for their successes, in whatever endeavor they make them and at whatever level of excellence they can reach.
IndividualismThe work and virtue that Objectivism admires is not the product of any group. It is not the product
of nations, as such, nor of tribes, nor of races, nor of sexes. It is the product of individuals. As Ayn Rand said, "There is no such thing as a collective brain."
Human beings are individual organisms, each with his own mind to guide his actions, his own senses with which to know the
world, his own body to sustain and enjoy, and his own values to achieve. We live in social networks: families, companies,
countries. But those are networks of individuals: What is a family without members? A company without staff? A country
without citizens? Objectivism is therefore an individualist philosophy, root and branch.
In politics, it holds that there is no political principle higher than individual rights. In morality, there is no standard
that trumps the value of an individual's own precious life and happiness. Indeed, no other thinker has stood up for individualism
with the consistency of Ayn Rand . It was a theme she celebrated over and over in her
novels. In The Fountainhead , her great homage to the individual, she contrasted three archetypes
of the ambitious man. Her Peter Keating wants social success but doesn't know what he wants for himself. Her Gail Wynand
equates success with gaining power over others. But her Howard Roark is the true individualist: He lives on his own terms,
for his own sake, and at root has interest neither in being what others might want nor in forcing others to do what he
might want. This attitude of fundamental independence is at the heart of Rand's social vision of benevolent individuals
who can stand, both mentally and physically, on their own two feet. In today's culture, there is great respect
for the individual. But there is even greater admiration for altruism, the anti-individualist moral standard that
measures a person's worth by the degree to which he serves others. Witness the Republican Party's embrace of "compassion"
as the theme of their governance, trumping non-altruistic political values such as probity, honor, integrity, or responsibility.
Witness Illinois senator Barack Obama's much-lauded speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. There, Obama claimed
the moral high ground by proclaiming that, far more than the mere right to pursue happiness, what his party stood for was
the altruist principle that we are "our brothers' keepers." Objectivism rejects the sacrifice of the individual to the demands of others.
It rejects the moral standard that defines a person's worth by his social service. As Ayn Rand brilliantly illustrated in Atlas Shrugged , when men truly attempt to live as "their brothers'
keepers," the result is the kind of cannibal society achieved by Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, and today's "Democratic
Republic" of North Korea. Objectivism rejects the sacrifice of the individual to the demands of others. Because
of its principled commitment to individualism, Objectivism rejects any social theory that places the group over the person.
It rejects all attempts to define people fundamentally by their race, their tribe, their sexual identities, their nation,
or their class. It doesn't claim that there are no racial characteristics; of course there are: Northern Europeans tend
to sunburn easily; Africans tend to have curly hair. It doesn't claim that there are no sexual characteristics: Romantic
love would not be possible without sexuality. But under these generalizations, what each normal human being has in common
is the possession of an independent, reasoning mind. Thus, Objectivism 's commitment to freedom, its more fundamental commitment
to achievement, and its yet more fundamental commitment to individualism all come down to the bedrock of its commitment to
reason.
ReasonAyn Rand defined reason as "the faculty that identifies and integrates
the material provided by man's senses" ( The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 20). It is, in other words, your thinking
mind. Reason is the distinguishing feature of mankind, not because we always think straight, but because we can do so if we
choose. It is reason that enables us to know. Through our sight, hearing, body awareness, smell, taste, and touch
we are in contact with the absolute facts of reality: what is, what is out there. We use our faculty of
reason to integrate that awareness of reality, to draw experiences of particular things together into concepts: cup,
rather than just my glass or your mug; tree, rather than any particular pine or oak. And we use our concepts to create
language, form theories, tell stories, and write books—we use them to know. Our faculty of reason underlies
everything that makes us stand apart from the other animals. It is reason, for instance, that makes us need the arts, to represent
profound ideas about what is and what might be in a form we can see and hear. Reason is critical to emotion, paradoxical
as that may seem. Emotions are direct feelings about what is good or bad, desirable or undesirable, threatening or encouraging.
Animals feel pleasure and pain. They experience basic passions—everyone has seen an angry dog defending its territory.
But human beings do much more. Our emotions are based in conceptual judgment: We don't merely lust, we love. We don't
just hunger, we crave cuisine. We don't just fear physical attack, we fear injustice or the disapproval of someone we
respect. We need this experience of value judgments. So, living by reason implies harmonizing our thinking minds and our feelings
so that our emotions reflect our rational judgments. Living by reason means, fundamentally, seeking objective knowledge
and, conversely, never accepting the irrational. It means reaching judgments with the rigor of a scientist and the probity
of a judge. Scientists use logic and mathematics to strictly confirm their theories on the basis of hard facts. Judges admit
all, and only, the relevant evidence. To live by reason one should never deny a fact, and one should always strive to integrate
together the facts one is aware of—however uncomfortable, untraditional, or unintuitive they may be. In this way, we
find truth, not mere speculation, and we come to know reality, not simply our own fantasies. Nothing
less than consistent rationality will do, if we want to be sure of our judgments. Objectivism thus rejects any form of belief that is not logically based
in fact. It opposes any religious mysticism that demands that we accept dogma on the basis of faith, wish, or hope. It likewise
opposes any secular thought that elevates ideology over proof. This thorough-going commitment to reason informs
every aspect of the Objectivist ethics. Ayn Rand preached "the virtue of selfishness," but her distinctive
concept is not the short-sighted, narrow, destructive selfishness of a bully or a dictator. Virtuous selfishness is rational:
It is a commitment to living in a manner that will really allow one to flourish, using all one's talents and faculties—and
reason is the foremost among them. A commitment to reason underlies the Objectivist commitment to moral integrity: A rational
person makes choices for the long term, taking account of the full context, and acts consistently on the basis of objectively
proven principles. And rational selfishness is gregarious: It recognizes that other people are worth knowing, respecting,
and dealing with because of the astounding range of benefits they offer. Reason is essential to the Objectivist
politics, too. It is our reason that makes it possible for us to plan long-term and to envision alternatives to what exists.
Reason makes possible production and all forms of truly human work. It makes industrial and agricultural advances possible.
It makes possible the knowledge economy, powered by the mind. It is because of reason that we can resolve disputes in a court
of law and not, as the animals do, by fang and claw. It makes a society based on contract and trade possible; it makes capitalism
possible. To achieve our values in society, we need the freedom to act by the judgment of our individual, rational minds.
That is why we have individual rights and why we need them protected by government. We need freedom in order to
live. Given freedom, our reason lets us thrive. This is why the enemies of freedom are so often enemies of reason, as Ayn Rand pointed out in Atlas Shrugged and her cultural commentary. It is why the enemies of reason
are also, whether they know it or not, in fact enemies of life.
A
Benevolent UniverseThis is the choice Objectivism presents us with. Do we choose life, and all that it involves
and entails? If so, then we accept what it means to be human: We accept our need for reason; we accept our individuality;
we accept our need to achieve values; and we accept our need to be free to do so. Do we choose to think and to base our life's
code on the facts, integrating the present with the long-term, the nearby with the faraway? If so, Objectivism is where thought leads, because Objectivism is the philosophy
of reason. When we live by objective principles, we live in what Ayn Rand called a "benevolent universe." Our world is propitious
to our efforts because it can be comprehended and mastered by reason. Success is to be expected, and failure is just a challenge
to overcome. In the wide vistas open to human talent, great things await us. Man's NatureMan's
mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not.
His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature
and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. . . . To remain
alive, he must think.
["This Is John Galt Speaking," Atlas Shrugged] The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by
his mind and produced by his effort.
["What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] Since values are to be discovered by man’s mind, men must be free to discover them—to think, to study,
to translate their knowledge into physical form, to offer their products for trade, to judge them, and to choose, be it material
goods or ideas, a loaf of bread or a philosophical treatise.
["What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise
his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man’s survival requires that those who think be free of the interference
of those who don’t.
["What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind.
["What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] Man's Rights. . . the source of rights is man's nature.
["Man's Rights,"
The Virtue of Selfishness] . . .—the source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and
Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to
live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right
to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live
as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational.
["This Is John Galt Speaking," Atlas Shrugged] A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context.
There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his
own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining
and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being
for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.) The concept of a "right" pertains only to action—specifically,
to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every
individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his
own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations
on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.
["Man’s Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness] Property Rights The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is
their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his
own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while
others dispose of his product, is a slave. Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the
others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object.
It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it.
It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.
["Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness] It is only on the basis of property rights that the sphere and application of individual rights can be defined
in any given social situation. Without property rights, there is no way to solve or to avoid a hopeless chaos of clashing
views, interests, demands, desires, and whims.
["The Cashing-In: The Student 'Rebellion,'" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] The source of property rights is the law of causality. All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man's
mind and labor. As you cannot have effects without causes, so you cannot have wealth without its source: without intelligence.
You cannot force intelligence to work: those who're able to think, will not work under compulsion; those who will, won't
produce much more than the price of the whip needed to keep them enslaved.
["This Is John Galt Speaking," Atlas Shrugged] Violation of RightsMan's rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means
of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his
own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.
["The Nature of Government," The Virtue of Selfishness] A unilateral breach of contract involves an indirect use of physical force: it consists, in essence, of one man receiving
the material values, goods or services of another, then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical
possession), not by right—i.e., keeping them without the consent of their owner. Fraud involves a similarly indirect
use of force: it consists of obtaining material values without their owner's consent, under false pretenses or false promises.
Extortion is another variant of an indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values, not in exchange for values,
but by the threat of force, violence or injury.
["The Nature of Government," The Virtue of Selfishness] There are two potential violators of man’s rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of
the United States was to draw a distinction between these two—by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the
activities of the first.
["Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness] Criminals are a small minority in any age or country. And the harm they have done to mankind is infinitesimal when
compared to the horrors—the bloodshed, the wars, the persecutions, the confiscations, the famines, the enslavements,
the wholesale destructions—perpetrated by mankind's governments. Potentially, a government is the most dangerous
threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. When
unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is men's deadliest enemy.
["Man's Rights,"
The Virtue of Selfishness] The government [of the United States] was set to protect man from criminals—and the Constitution was written
to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed against private citizens, but against the government—as
an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.
["Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness] GovernmentA government is an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules
of social conduct in a given geographical area.
["The Nature of Government," The Virtue of Selfishness] . . . the purpose of law and of government is the protection of individual rights.
["The Nature of Government,"
The Virtue of Selfishness] The Declaration of Independence laid down the principle that "to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men." This provided the only valid justification of a government and defined its only proper purpose: to protect
man's rights by protecting him from physical violence.
["Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness] The proper functions of a government fall into three broad categories, all of them involving the issues of physical
force and the protection of men's rights: the police, to protect men from criminals—the armed services,
to protect men from foreign invaders—the law courts, to settle disputes among men according to objective laws.
["The Nature of Government," The Virtue of Selfishness] The only function of the government, . . . is the task of protecting man's rights, i.e., the
task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man's right of self-defense, and may use
force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.
["What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force
a moral imperative.
["The Nature of Government," The Virtue of Selfishness] The retaliatory use of force requires objective rules of evidence to establish that a crime has been committed
and to prove who committed it, as well as objective rules to define punishments and enforcement procedures
. . . . If a society left the retaliatory use of force in the hands of individual citizens, it would degenerate
into mob rule, lynch law and an endless series of bloody private feuds or vendettas. If physical force is to be barred
from social relationships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective
code of rules. This is the task of a government—of a proper government—its basic task,
its only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government. A government is the means of placing the
retaliatory use of force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws.
["The Nature of
Government," The Virtue of Selfishness] CapitalismCapitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property
rights, in which all property is privately owned. The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of
physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society,
no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others.
["What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] . . . freedom, in a political context, has only one meaning: the absence of physical coercion.
["America's
Persecuted Minority: Big Business," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] When I say "capitalism," I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with
a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
["The
Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue of Selfishness] It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man's nature—the connection between his survival and his use of reason—that
capitalism recognizes and protects. In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are
free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions, and interests dictate.
They can deal with one another only in terms of and by means of reason, i.e., by means of discussion, persuasion,
and contractual agreement, by voluntary choice to mutual benefit.
["What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] It is, . . . by reference to philosophy that the character of a social system has to be defined and evaluated.
Corresponding to the four branches of philosophy, the four keystones of capitalism are: metaphysically, the requirements of
man's nature and survival—epistemologically, reason—ethically, individual rights—politically, freedom.
["What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational
nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.
["What
Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] Capitalism cannot work with slave labor. It was the agrarian, feudal South that maintained slavery. It was the
industrial, capitalistic North that wiped it out—as capitalism wiped out slavery and serfdom in the whole civilized
world of the nineteenth century.
["Theory and Practice," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] Let those who are actually concerned with peace observe that capitalism gave mankind the longest period of
peace in history—a period during which there were no wars involving the entire civilized world—from the end
of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
["The Roots of War," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible.
The contrast between West and East Berlin is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see.
["Theory
and Practice," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] The essence of capitalism's foreign policy is free trade—i.e., the abolition of trade
barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges—the opening of the world's trade routes to free international
exchange and competition among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another.
["The Roots
of War," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] Free MarketIntellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political
freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.
["For
the New Intellectual," For the New Intellectual] In a free market, all prices, wages, and profits are determined—not by the arbitrary whim of the rich or
of the poor, not by anyone's "greed" or by anyone's need—but by the law of supply and demand. The
mechanism of a free market reflects and sums up all the economic choices and decisions made by all the participants. Men trade
their goods or services by mutual consent to mutual advantage, according to their own independent, uncoerced judgment. A man
can grow rich only if he is able to offer better values—better products or services, at a lower price—than
others are able to offer. Wealth, in a free market, is achieved by a free, general, "democratic" vote—by
the sales and the purchases of every individual who takes part in the economic life of the country. Whenever you buy one product
rather than another, you are voting for the success of some manufacturer. And, in this type of voting, every man votes only
on those matters which he is qualified to judge: on his own preferences, interests, and needs. No one has the power to decide
for others or to substitute his judgment for theirs.
["America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business,"
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] Any undertaking that involves more than one man, requires the voluntary consent of every participant.
Every one of them has the right to make his own decision, but none has the right to force his decision on the others.
["Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness] The economic value of a man's work is determined, on a free market, by a single principle: by the voluntary consent
of those who are willing to trade him their work or products in return. This is the moral meaning of the law of supply and
demand; . . . It represents the recognition of the fact that man is not the property nor the servant of the tribe, that
a man works in order to support his own life—as, by his nature, he must—that he has to be guided by his
own rational self-interest, and if he wants to trade with others, he cannot expect sacrificial victims, i.e., he
cannot expect to receive values without trading commensurate values in return. The sole criterion of what is commensurate,
in this context, is the free, voluntary, uncoerced judgment of the traders.
["What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] There is no such thing as "a right to a job"—there is only the right of free trade, that is:
a man's right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him. There is no "right to a home," only the right
of free trade: the right to build a home or to buy it. There are no "rights to a 'fair' wage or a 'fair'
price" if no one chooses to pay it, to hire a man or to buy his product.
["Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness] The United States of AmericaThe most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States of America
was the subordination of society to moral law. The principle of man's individual rights represented the
extension of morality into the social system—as a limitation on the power of the state, as man's protection against
the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first
moral society in history. All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others,
and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful,
orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man's life belongs to society,
that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission
of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man's life is his by right (which means:
by moral principle and by his nature), that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights,
and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights.
["Man's Rights,"
The Virtue of Selfishness] . . . the United States is the highest achievement of the millennia of Western civilization's struggle toward
individualism, . . .
["Requiem for Man," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal] . . . the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the
only moral country in the history of the world.
["Philosophy Who needs It," The Ayn Rand Letter]
This article was originally published in the December 2004 issue of Navigator magazine, The
Atlas Society precursor to The New Individualist. The
need for a complete understanding of what once made America a special place has never been greater. President Bush spoke last
Thursday about our being "called to defend freedom." What does this mean? Is this more than political jingoism?
Without a clear conception of what we are defending, we might find ourselves doing quite the opposite. Therefore I will endeavor
to complete the list here. Hopefully it will place the above values into a larger context. My list includes: individual liberty, personal responsibility, Constitutionally limited government
and the rule of law. In large measure, of course, America has drifted from each. This spells trouble, because
taken together these are the principles of a free society. Since they haven’t been taught in the government
schools in quite a while now, few Americans – even those who think of themselves as "conservative" –
can articulate them very well. But if we cannot reassess where the country stands in light of its founding principles, then
we are in more danger than ever of losing them altogether. And then the terrorists will have won. For example, if law-abiding
American citizens find themselves hysterically embracing national ID cards, wiretapping, massive searches of private property
by federal agents and so on, all in the name of feeling secure, then the terrorists will have destroyed that
which made America great – namely, freedom! So let us begin anew. Individual liberty is the state of affairs, within important limits, in which
law-abiding citizens can live according to their own choices rather than those of someone else. If you want to obtain an education,
you can. There are no significant restrictions on what you can read, or where you may travel. If you want to start a business,
no one will stop you. Your business may make you rich, and no one will plunder your wealth or tell you how you must spend
it. If you wish to own a gun, that is your prerogative. In a free society, you may worship God as you see fit, or not worship
anything at all. This is quite unlike most of the rest of the world, and increasingly unlike the America we live in today.
Of course, individual liberty does not mean the
freedom to do anything one pleases. Freedom is not anarchy. Genuine freedom recognizes bounds placed on human conduct by common
morality. Moral citizens have learned to restrict their own basic impulses in specific ways. It would be fair to say that
genuine freedom involves a kind of paradox (the "paradox of liberty," I sometimes call it): freedom flourishes when
citizens embrace restrictions on their conduct imposed from within, to avoid their being imposed from without. The basic moral
limit to individual liberty is the familiar barring of the initiation of force against others. Using force automatically means
taking others’ liberties away. It is also illegitimate to defraud others, or cheat them. Sometimes all this is cashed
out in the language of rights: individuals have a right to live in accordance with their own choices so long as they do not
violate or forcibly interfere with others’ right to do the same. This all brings us to the second. Personal responsibility.
At base, individual liberty works under the assumption that individuals take care of themselves. The world does not take care
of the individual. The ideal is that individuals take care of themselves by taking necessary actions – getting an education
and then either working in an occupation for which they were educated or starting a business and supplying a market with some
good. This calls for individuals to develop a sense of personal responsibility. Of course, the ideal is not always realized and there are some obvious exceptions to it: we
do not come into the world as fully formed, thinking, acting adults but as helpless babies. It is easy to cash out individualism
in an excessive, atomistic fashion. We are all individuals, and all our actions are individual actions, but we are not atoms;
as individuals we are members of families, formal organizations such as businesses and churches, and more loosely structured
ones such as communities. In a free society there is no supervening entity (a central government, for example) whose purpose
is to take care of the individual, whether to provide safety nets, guarantee good health, or whatever. But sophisticated,
as opposed to atomistic, individualism embraces the fact that we are members of larger systems such as families, businesses,
churches, and communities. Individuals, in their efforts to be independent, sometimes suffer setbacks, and sometimes these
setbacks are personally devastating. At these times, the resources of one’s family members can prove invaluable. Within
other organizations are other resources through which people can help each other, creating local "safety nets" for
one another. The important point to note is at this local, community level, such actions between people who have sometimes
known each other all their lives are voluntary and not forced. The benevolence between people that emerges, especially in
times of crisis, is sincere, not artificial. Central government, with its army of bureaucrats coming into communities from
the outside, cannot achieve the level of trust and benevolence that exists among members of a community who grew up as neighbors,
played on the same sports teams, graduated from the same high schools, and so on. Moreover, bureaucracy causes harm in at
least two other ways. The taxation needed to support the bureaucrats drains resources from where they may be employed more
effectively, and the presence of bureaucrats may lead people who haven’t seen anything different to take for granted
that providing "safety nets" is a job only bureaucrats can perform. This brings us to the third. Constitutionally limited
government. Government, as every libertarian knows, is the one institution in society with a legal monopoly on
the use of force. This makes it the most dangerous institution in any society, and the one most important to limit. The Framers
knew this, and while they may have wanted a government more centralized than the one defined by the Articles of Confederation,
all understood well the importance of setting limits. So in what became known as the Constitutional Convention of 1787, they
spelled out those limits, dividing the intended federal government into its familiar three branches, designating specific
powers to each and building checks on the power of each into the others. Example: the President (executive branch) is designated
Commander-in-Chief, but under Constitutionally correct government, only Congress (legislative branch) has the power to declare
war. Limitations on government are, however, fragile
and must be preserved by vigilance, as Thomas Jefferson observed ("vigilance," he said, "is the price of liberty.").
This is, in a nutshell, the central problem of political philosophy: not how to build the ideal society but how to control
power. A Constitution is merely a written document; it won’t protect itself. The need for vigilance is one of our responsibilities,
and arguably we have fallen down badly in this area. In recent years, "undeclared wars" have allowed two generations
of presidents to thwart the check on the power of the executive branch. The Clinton Regime’s end runs around Congress
were blatant. If Clinton wanted to bomb someone, he did. This, of course, barely scratches the surface. To see how far we
have drifted from Constitutionally limited government, we have only to look at the Constitution and realize that there is
nothing in it about education, for example. Nor will one find anything allowing for taxation on one’s personal income
or for social security or for affirmative action or many other things now taken for granted. The Constitution, moreover, makes no provisions for a federal government large enough
and powerful enough to police the rest of the world, whether to impose "democracy" on peoples who don’t want
it or for any other purpose. It does make provisions intended to ensure that the checks on government power have teeth in
them. These were insisted upon by the critics of the original Constitution – the so-called Antifederalists. We owe them
the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The First Amendment grants citizens the authority to criticize
official government policy without being arrested and thrown in jail; the Second, arguably, was intended as a separate check
on government power by means of an armed adult citizenry (the original meaning of militia). Other amendments place
additional limits on the power of government; the Ninth and Tenth, finally, underscore the rest of the document by designating
that in a Constitutional republic the states are sovereign. The federal government is their servant, not their master. Moreover,
the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution and Bill of Rights was not to be taken as exhaustive of all rights,
the clear implication being that rights antecede legal authority. Here we arrive, again, at a moral and metaphysical / theological
basis for Constitutionally limited government. Most of the Framers, of course, believed that rights as moral claims with teeth
in them can come only from God, the Author and Final Arbiter of justice in the universe. The rule of law. The Constitution
was intended to be the supreme law of the land. While cashing out what this meant took some doing, the idea was to build up
– for the first time – a society whose government answered to the authority of its own founding documents as understood
above. There were, of course, antecedents such as the Magna Carta. That document made specific claims on the king, John, but
didn’t provide a larger philosophical framework. By and large, in the past the king was the law and could do as he pleased.
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution set out to change that. The struggle toward controlling power with something other than a greater power was long, hard, and is far from over.
There is, I am firmly convinced, a minority in any population that is fascinated by power and understands people and relationships
only in its terms. Many members of this minority in our population end up in politics where they can thwart the intentions
of the Framers. They have had plenty of help from the academic and educational worlds, where ideologies emphasizing power
have flourished. For a few years I debated the topic of power and restraints on power (mostly through the mail and eventually
email) with a professor of public administration at a major northeastern university. My position: a government worthy of loyalty
and support adheres to the rules it sets for itself, and does not try to micromanage everything in sight. His position: all
truth and morality is determined by authority or power, so that power gets the last word in any event. He believed we ought
to abandon the Constitution. His position held that science alone, with its special method, would get us past the temptations
of power. As to how and why we could expect this from an institution no less a product of human beings than any other institution,
he had no answer. Over the past 20 years, of course,
such "deconstructions" of principles have become fashionable. Academic deconstructionism serves up a cynical view
of society. This is perhaps because its purveyors know that their often-frivolous linguistic games would not survive without
the huge, government-supported university systems and federal grants that nurture bizarre beliefs and hatch all manner of
agendas that don’t work. I propose that we
scrap it all and return to the principles outlined above. Naturally, these principles deviate from what the current Republican
administration and its supporters are proposing. George W. Bush Jr.’s words and actions so far since September 11 offer
a mixed bag. On the one hand, he has shown admirable restraint. Surely, Al what’s-his-name (Bill Clinton’s hand-picked
successor) would have leveled Kabul by now, without having gotten a single terrorist. On the other, however, Bush Jr. has
shown no tendency to rethink American foreign policy. Rethinking our foreign policy might include rethinking our government’s
unconditional support for Israel, its continued pointless embargo against Iraq which has killed thousands of children without
harming Saddam Hussein in the slightest, or our society’s more general tendency to import secular, materialist values
into deeply traditional societies. At present,
this country is moving rapidly into Crisis mode. As I argued in a previous article, something like this happens every 70 or so years. Every Crisis by nature involves a kind of destabilizing. People who want
power thrive in that kind of environment. Bush Jr. and his cohorts have assembled a large if somewhat fragile coalition of
supporters representing a formidable force that includes other Islamic countries. It is at least possible that this coalition
will eventually smoke out Osama bin Laden, shut down his training camps and disperse his underground army. But then what? Will Bush’s worldwide alliance then become a major
problem in its own right? Exactly when will we know we have dealt effectively with bin Laden and his followers (assuming that
is possible)? And at what point will we be willing to back off? Just how far are we willing to go on the domestic front in
the name of "security"? Do the events of this past month have anything to do with what George Bush Sr. called the
New World Order? The importance of articulating
this country’s founding principles has never been greater. This is surely more urgent than flying American flags from
every car, over every business, and on everyone’s lapel. These kinds of security blankets will not protect our freedoms.
Understanding our founding principles places into a larger context the four values we began with: generosity, service, courage,
resilience. Our founding principles made this the most prosperous country in history. You can be generous with others once
you’ve produced more than you need; free markets make this possible. You can serve others best when you are free; anything
else is slavery. You can be your most courageous when you have principles worth fighting for, including saving lives. And
you have a reason to be resilient when you know that truth and right are on your side, because the principles that originally
built America are true and right. Finally, you have an incentive to engage in the real war
right here at home, the struggle to return America to its founding principles. There is a desperate need to get our house in order while there is still time. We should recall
the warnings issued by our first president, George Washington, against "foreign entanglements." If we can raise
up a new commitment to the principles this country was founded on here at home, coupled with a willingness to mind our own
business and stop telling the rest of the world how to live, this might make us slightly less of a threat overseas, somewhat
less hated, and considerably less tempting of a target. www.lewrockwell.com Scroll down for next article ...
Politicians
do not own your life, liberty, or property ( money, land, etc ). They exist simply to protect and secure your
life, liberty, and property.
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