Fight!

The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.

John Galt quote that ended Ayn Rand's last public speech (New Orleans Nov 1981)

My letter to Time Magazine

In his essay The Class system of Catastrophe, Jeffrey Sachs uses the occasion of the recent tsunami disaster in South East Asia to promote his pet agenda: increased American foreign aid to the third world. Mr. Sachs correctly notes that the scourge of natural disaster is wrought more devastatingly in poor than rich nations. However, his proposal, increased development aid to impoverished countries, is merely a band aid solution that will do nothing to rectify the underlying problem. What is desperately needed in the third world is an ethos of personal responsibility, and government that recognizes individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In short, what the third world desperately needs is not more aid, but more capitalism.

Rational Selfishness

A key point of Objectivist Ethics became clear to me today. There is a crucial difference between acting selfishly and doing what you feel like. Acting selfishly, in its true and proper sense, means acting in your rational self interest according to your objective nature as man - a rational being. As man you have certain objective requirements: physical requirements like food, water and shelter; but also spiritual requirements like self esteem. Doing what you feel like may or may not promote your rational self interest. For example, you might feel like sleeping in, but if by doing so you arrive late to work and lose your job, you are not acting selfishly. This is an important distinction: the fact that you choose a particular action does not make it selfish; an action is only selfish if it is in your rational self interest.

According to Objectivist Ethics, to be moral is to be selfish. I know this is a difficult idea to swallow, so let's consider a case study. Is a bank robber selfish? A bank robber acts to satisfy his physical requirements for food, water, shelter and higher level amenities, but in the process he betrays his spiritual requirement for self esteem. He must live with the knowledge that he did not earn his posessions and can take no selfish pride in these things. Further, he is under the constant fear of being caught; every other person on the planet is now a potential threat who may turn him in. This is no way for a human being to live. It is clear that the bank robber did not act in his rational self interest. He did not act selfishly.

In contrast, consider the businessman who by his own effort and determination is able to bring a product to market and earn a profit for himself. He can take pride in his achievement and enjoy the fruit of his labors. He has promoted both his physical and spiritual needs. He has acted selfishly and morally.

The dominant morality of our day is altruism. According to altruism, an action is moral if it serves others. The bankruptcy of altruism is exposed by its inability to draw a moral distinction between the businessman and the bank robber. The same word, "selfish", is commonly applied to describe the actions of both. It is a sad commentary that our language does not draw a clear distinction between rational egoism and exploitation.

Democracy: The Sacred Cow

Carter Laren de-mystifies democracy and reminds us that the American political system is not a democracy, but a constitutional republic. Further, he argues that the system we should be promoting in Afghanistan and Iraq is capitalism.

Am I a conservative?

My politics are frequently branded as 'conservative'. It is not a label I abhor; nor is it one I am completely comfortable with. I must admit, I was a liberal for most of my life, and I have not completely recovered. One of the lingering effects of that malaise is a certain antipathy for the conservative label. Unfairly or not, I associate the term with traditionalism, authoritarianism, anti-intellectualism, religiosity, and a certain curmudgeonly resistance to change.

At the same time, I share much in common with conservatives. I believe in limited government. I am a capitalist. I am more hawkish than George Bush.

My problem with the term is that I find it too general. 'Conservative' is used equally well to describe the Heritage Foundation, the Christian Coalition, and mullahs in the Iranian regime. The essential question, I think, is not whether you are conservative, but what is it that you are trying to conserve? The welfare state? United Airlines? Traditional marriage? The only answer that impresses me is the one Thomas Jefferson gave: the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Which is why, in a way, I still consider myself a liberal. 'Liberal' once had nearly the opposite of its current meaning: classically, it was used to describe an advocate for freedom and limited government; now it is used to describe a proponent for every kind of state control. I think the right made a strategic error by yielding such a valuable term to the left. The right's denigration of the term 'liberal' makes counterintuitive the truth that ours is the side of political freedom. We are the true defenders of individual rights and freedom from excessive and arbitrary government. The left, in contrast, seeks freedom from reality, at the expense of the individual.