Part 15 (2/2)
PLAYBOY: Would you favor U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations?
RAND: Yes. I do not sanction the grotesque pretense of an organization allegedly devoted to world peace and human rights, which includes Soviet Russia, the worst aggressor and bloodiest butcher in history, as one of its members. The notion of protecting rights, with Soviet Russia among the protectors, is an insult to the concept of rights and to the intelligence of any man who is asked to endorse or sanction such an organization. I do not believe that an individual should cooperate with criminals, and, for all the same reasons, I do not believe that free countries should cooperate with dictators.h.i.+ps.
PLAYBOY: Would you advocate severing diplomatic relations with Russia ?
RAND: Yes.
[”Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand,” pamphlet, 11.]
Russia, like n.a.z.i Germany, like any bully, feeds on appeas.e.m.e.nt and will retreat placatingly at the first sound of firm opposition.
[”U.S. Position on Cuba Endangered by U.N.,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 11, 1962.]
When certain statist groups, counting, apparently, on a total collapse of American self-esteem, dare go so far as to urge America's surrender into slavery without a fight, under the slogan ”Better Red Than Dead”- the ”conservatives” rush to proclaim that they prefer to be dead, thus helping to spread the idea that our only alternative is communism or destruction, forgetting that the only proper answer to an ultimatum of that kind is: ”Better See The Reds Dead.”
[”Choose Your Issues,” TON,jan. 1962, 1.]
See also ”COLLECTIVE RIGHTS”; COMMUNISM; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; DRAFT; FREEDOM; GOVERNMENT; IDEOLOGY; ”ISOLATIONISM”; NATIONAL RIGHTS; PACIFISM; PEACE MOVEMENTS; SELF-DEFENSE; SELF-DETERMINATION of NATIONS; SOVIET RUSSlA; UNITED NATIONS; WAR.
Founding Fathers. The basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man's right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness-which means: man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; and that the political implementation of this right is a society where men deal with one another as traders, by voluntary exchange to mutual benefit.
[”For the New Intellectual,” FNI, 62; pb 53.]
The Founding Fathers were neither pa.s.sive, death-wors.h.i.+pping mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters; as a political group, they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history: they were thinkers who were also men of action. They had rejected the soul-body dichotomy, with its two corollaries: the impotence of man's mind and the d.a.m.nation of this earth; they had rejected the doctrine of suffering as man's metaphysical fate, they proclaimed man's right to the pursuit of happiness and were determined to establish on earth the conditions required for man's proper existence, by the ”unaided” power of their intellect.
[Ibid., 23; pb 25.]
In the modern world, under the influence of the pervasive new climate, a succession of thinkers developed a new conception of the nature of government. The most important of these men and the one with the greatest influence on America was John Locke. The political philosophy Locke bequeathed to the Founding Fathers is what gave rise to the new nation's distinctive inst.i.tutions. That political philosophy is the social implementation of the Aristotelian spirit.
Throughout history the state had been regarded, implicitly or explicitly, as the ruler of the individual-as a sovereign authority (with or without supernatural mandate), an authority logically antecedent to the citizen and to which he must submit. The Founding Fathers challenged this primordial notion. They started with the premise of the primacy and sovereignty of the individual. The individual, they held, logically precedes the group or the inst.i.tution of government. Whether or not any social organization exists, each man possesses certain indinidual rights. And ”among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”-or, in the words of a New Hamps.h.i.+re state doc.u.ment, ”among which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; and in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness.”
[Leonard Peikoff, OP, III; pb 109.]
The genius of the Founding Fathers was their ability not only to grasp the revolutionary ideas of the period, but to devise a means of implementing those ideas in practice, a means of translating them from the realm of philosophic abstraction into that of sociopolitical reality. By defining in detail the division of powers within the government and the ruling procedures, including the brilliant mechanism of checks and balances, they established a system whose operation and integrity were independent, so far as possible, of the moral character of any of its temporary officials-a system impervious, so far as possible, to subversion by an aspiring dictator or by the public mood of the moment.
The heroism of the Founding Fathers was that they recognized an unprecedented opportunity, the chance to create a country of individual liberty for the first time in history-and that they staked everything on their judgment: the new nation and their own ”lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.”
[Ibid., 114; pb 112.]
”I have sworn upon the altar of G.o.d, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Jefferson-and the other Founding Fathers-meant it. They did not confine their efforts to the battle against theocracy and monarchy; they fought, on the same grounds, invoking the same principle of individual rights-against democracy, i.e., the system of unlimited majority rule. They recognized that the cause of freedom is not advanced by the multiplication of despots, and they did not propose to subst.i.tute the tyranny of a mob for that of a handful of autocrats....
When the framers of the American republic spoke of ”the people,” they did not mean a collectivist organism one part of which was authorized to consume the rest. They meant a sum of individuals, each of whom-whether strong or weak, rich or poor-retains his inviolate guarantee of individual rights.
[Ibid., 113; pb III.) The political philosophy of America's Founding Fathers is so thoroughly buried under decades of statist misrepresentations on one side and empty lip-service on the other, that it has to be re-discovered, not ritualistically repeated. It has to be rescued from the shameful barnacles of plat.i.tudes now hiding it. It has to be expanded-because it was only a magnificent beginning, not a completed job, it was only a pulitical philosophy without a full philosophical and moral foundation, which the ”conservatives” cannot provide.
[”It Is Earlier Than You Think,” TON, Dec. 1964, 52.]
See also AMERICA; ARISTOTLE; CONSt.i.tUTION; ENLIGHTENMENT, AGE of; FREEDOM; INDIVIDUALISM; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; LIFE, RIGHT to; PURSUIT of HAPPINESS, RIGHT to; RELIGION; REPUBLIC; SOUL-BODY DICHOTOMY.
Fraud. 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 then owner's consent, under false pretenses or false promises.
[”The Nature of Government.” VOS, 150; ph III.]
See also CONTRACTS: PHYSICAL FORCE.
Free Market. In a free economy, where no man or group of men can use physical coercion against anyone, economic power can be achieved only by voluntarymeans: by the voluntary choice and agreement of all those who partic.i.p.ate in the process of production and trade. 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 partic.i.p.ants. 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 subst.i.tute his judgment for theirs; no one has the power to appoint himself ”the voice of the public” and to leave the public voiceless and disfranchised.
[”America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” CUI, 47.]
Intellectual 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,” FNI, 23; pb 25.]
The free market represents the social application of an objective theory of values. 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. Since values are established contextually, every man must judge for himself, in the context of his own knowledge, goals, and interests. Since values are determined by the nature of reality, it is reality that serves as men's ultimate arbiter: if a man's judgment is right, the rewards are his; if it is wrong, he is his only victim.
[”What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 24.]
Now observe that a free market does not level men down to some common denominator-that the intellectual criteria of the majority do not rule a free market or a free society-and that the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements, while rising further and ever further.
A free market is a rontinuous process that cannot be held still, an upward process that demands the best (the most rational) of every man and rewards him accordingly. While the majority have barely a.s.similated the value of the automobile, the creative minority introduces the airplane. The majority learn by demonstration, the minority is free to demonstrate. The ”philosophically objective” value of a new product serves as the teacher for those who are willing to exercise their rational faculty, each to the extent of his ability. those who are unwilling remain unrewarded-as well as those who aspire to more than their ability produces. The stagnant, the irrational, the subjectivist have no power to stop their betters....
The mental parasites-the imitators who attempt to cater to what they think is the public's known taste-are constantly being beaten by the innovators whose products raise the public's knowledge and taste to ever higher levels. It is in this sense that the free market is ruled, not by the consumers, but by the producers. The most successful ones are those who discover new fields of production, fields which had not been known to exist.
A given product may not be appreciated at once, particularly if it is too radical an innovation; but, barring irrelevant accidents, it wins in the long run. It is in this sense that the free market is not ruled by the intellectual criteria of the majority, which prevail only at and for any given moment; the free market is ruled by those who are able to see and plan tong-range-and the better the mind, the longer the range.
[Ibid., 25.]
All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.
[”America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” CUI, 48.]
See also CAPITALISM; INTERVENTIONISM (ECONOMIC); MARKET VALUE.
Free Speech. Freedom of speech means freedom from interference, suppression or punitive action by the government-and nothing else. It does not mean the right to demand the financial support or the material means to express your views at the expense of other men who may not wish to support you. Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to agree, not to listen and not to support one's own antagonists. A ”right” does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort. Private citizens cannot use physical force or coercion; they cannot censor or suppress anyone's views or publications. Only the government can do so. And censors.h.i.+p is a concept that pertains only to governmental action.
[”The Fascist New Frontier,” pamphlet, 10.]
While people are clamoring about ”economic rights,” the concept of political rights is vanis.h.i.+ng. It is forgotten that the right of free speech means the freedom to advocate one's views and to bear the possible consequences, including disagreement with others, opposition, unpopularity and lack of support. The political function of ”the right of free speech” is to protect dissenters and unpopular minorities from forcible suppression-not to guarantee them the support, advantages and rewards of a popularity they have not gained.
The Bill of Rights reads: ”Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ...” It does not demand that private citizens provide a microphone for the man who advocates their destruction, or a pa.s.skey for the burglar who seeks to rob them, or a knife for the murderer who wants to cut their throats.
[”Man's Rights,” VOS, 133; pb 99.]
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