Principles in Practice: The Blog of the Objective Standard

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Put the 'Independence' Back in Independence Day by Michael S. Berliner

Posted by ARI Media at 8:39 PM

America's cities and towns will soon fill with parades, fireworks, and barbecues, in celebration of the Fourth of July, the 232nd birthday of America. But one hopes that the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, but America's leaders and intellectuals have been trying to move us further and further away from the meaning of Independence Day, away from the philosophy that created this country.

What we hear from politicians, intellectuals, and the media is that independence is passé, that we've reached a new age of "interdependence." We hear demands for mandatory "volunteering" to serve others, for sacrifice to the nation. We hear demands from trust-busters that successful companies be punished for being "greedy" and not serving society. But this is not the message of America. It is the direct opposite of why America became a beacon of hope for the truly oppressed throughout the world. They have come here to escape poverty and dictatorship; they have come here to live their own lives, where they aren't owned by the state, the community, or the tribe.

"Independence Day" is a critically important title. It signifies the fundamental meaning of this nation, not just of the holiday. The American Revolution remains unique in human history: a revolution--and a nation--founded on a moral principle, the principle of individual rights. Jefferson at Philadelphia, and Washington at Valley Forge, pledged their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor." For what? Not for mere separation from England, not—like most rebels—for the "freedom" to set up their own tyranny. In fact, Britain's tyranny over the colonists was mild compared to what most current governments do to their citizens.

Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit. Independence was proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence as the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What are these rights? The right to life means that every individual has a right to his own independent life, that one's life belongs to oneself, not to others to use as they see fit.

The right to liberty means the right to freedom of action, to act on one's own judgment, the right not to have a gun pointed at one's head and be forced to do what someone else commands. And the right to the pursuit of happiness means that an individual may properly pursue his own happiness, e.g., his own career, friends, hobbies, and not exist as a mere tool to serve the goals of others. The Founding Fathers did not proclaim a right to the attainment of happiness, knowing full well that such a policy would carry with it the obligation of others to make one happy and result in the enslavement of all to all. The Declaration of Independence was a declaration against servitude, not just servitude to the Crown but servitude to anyone. (That some signers still owned slaves does not negate the fact that they established the philosophy that doomed slavery.)

Political independence is not a primary. It rests on a more fundamental type of independence: the independence of the human mind. It is the ability of a human being to think for himself and guide his own life that makes political independence possible and necessary. The government as envisaged by the Founding Fathers existed to protect the freedom to think and to act on one's thinking. If human beings were unable to reason, to think for themselves, there would be no autonomy or independence for a government to protect. It is this independence that defines the American Revolution and the American spirit.

To the Founding Fathers, there was no authority higher than the individual mind, not King George, not God, not society. Reason, wrote Ethan Allen, is "the only oracle of man," and Thomas Jefferson advised us to "fix reason firmly in her seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God." That is the meaning of independence: trust in your own judgment, in reason; do not sacrifice your mind to the state, the church, the race, the nation, or your neighbors.

Independence is the foundation of America. Independence is what should be celebrated on Independence Day. That is the legacy our Founding Fathers left us. It is a legacy we should keep, not because it is a legacy, but because it is right and just. It has made America the freest and most prosperous country in history.

To see a video version of this op-ed click this: INDEPENDENCE

Michael S. Berliner is co-chairman of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Thursday, December 20, 2007

Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial by Dr. Leonard Peikoff

Posted by ARI Media at 11:31 PM

Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as "materialistic"; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously.

In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American invention. The freedom and prosperity of post Civil War America created the happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this feeling.

Historically, people have always celebrated the winter solstice as the time when the days begin to lengthen, indicating the earth's return to life. Ancient Romans feasted and reveled during the festival of Saturnalia. Early Christians condemned these Roman celebrations—they were waiting for the end of the world and had only scorn for earthly pleasures. By the fourth century the pagans were worshipping the god of the sun on December 25, and the Christians came to a decision: if you can't stop 'em, join 'em. They claimed (contrary to known fact) that the date was Jesus' birthday, and usurped the solstice holiday for their Church.

Even after the Christians stole Christmas, they were ambivalent about it. The holiday was inherently a pro-life festival of earthly renewal, but the Christians preached renunciation, sacrifice, and concern for the next world, not this one. As Cotton Mather, an 18th-century clergyman, put it: "Can you in your consciences think that our Holy Savior is honored by mirth? . . . Shall it be said that at the birth of our Savior . . . we take time . . . to do actions that have much more of hell than of heaven in them?"

Then came the major developments of 19th-century capitalism: industrialization, urbanization, the triumph of science—all of it leading to easy transportation, efficient mail delivery, the widespread publishing of books and magazines, new inventions making life comfortable and exciting, and the rise of entrepreneurs who understood that the way to make a profit was to produce something good and sell it to a mass market.

For the first time, the giving of gifts became a major feature of Christmas. Early Christians denounced gift-giving as a Roman practice, and Puritans called it diabolical. But Americans were not to be deterred. Thanks to capitalism, there was enough wealth to make gifts possible, a great productive apparatus to advertise them and make them available cheaply, and a country so content that men wanted to reach out to their friends and express their enjoyment of life. The whole country took with glee to giving gifts on an unprecedented scale.

Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. There was a St. Nicholas long ago and a feeble holiday connected with him (on December 5). In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick's physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids' stockings, then goes back to the North Pole.

Of course, the Puritans denounced Santa as the Anti-Christ, because he pushed Jesus to the background. Furthermore, Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice—Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.

All the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason, science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.

America's tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is religion and self-sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent. But the spiritual must start with recognizing reality. Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate—and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.

Dr. Leonard Peikoff, who founded the Ayn Rand Institute, is the foremost authority on Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. The Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Friday, October 05, 2007

Columbus Day Celebrates Western Civilization by Thomas Bowden

Posted by ARI Media at 9:39 AM

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, opening a sea route to vast uncharted territories that awaited the spread of Western civilization. Centuries later, the ensuing cultural migration culminated in the birth and explosive growth of the greatest nation in history: the United States of America.

It is fitting that we have set aside a day to honor the Great Explorer. On one level, Columbus Day honors the man himself for his many virtues. Columbus was a man of independent mind, who steadfastly pursued his bold plan for a westward voyage to the Indies despite powerful opposition--a man of courage, who set sail upon a trackless ocean with no assurance that he would ever reach land--a man of pride, who sought recognition and reward for his achievements.

We need not evade or excuse Columbus’s flaws--his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives--to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion.

Thus, the deeper meaning of Columbus Day is to celebrate the rational core of Western civilization, which flourished in the New World like a pot-bound plant liberated from its confining shell, demonstrating to the world what greatness is possible to man at his best.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose philosophers and mathematicians, men such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Euclid, displaced otherworldly mysticism by discovering the laws of logic and mathematical relationships, demonstrating to mankind that reality is a single realm accessible to human understanding.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose scientists, men such as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, banished primitive superstitions by discovering natural laws through the scientific method, demonstrating to mankind that the universe is both knowable and predictable.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose political geniuses, men such as John Locke and the Founding Fathers, defined the principles by which bloody tribal warfare, religious strife, and, ultimately, slavery could be eradicated by constitutional republics devoted to protecting life, liberty, property, and the selfish pursuit of individual happiness.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose entrepreneurs, men such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Gates, transformed an inhospitable wilderness populated by frightened savages into a wealthy nation of self-confident producers served by highways, power plants, computers, and thousands of other life-enhancing products.

On Columbus Day, in sum, we celebrate Western civilization as history’s greatest cultural achievement. What better reason could there be for a holiday?

Mr. Bowden is an analyst focusing on legal issues at the Ayn Rand Institute and is the author of The Enemies of Christopher Columbus.  A former attorney and law school instructor who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his Op-Eds have appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Monday, August 27, 2007

The Real Lesson of World War II

Posted by ARI Media at 10:17 PM

Irvine, Calif.—In a recent speech at the Foreign Wars National Convention, President Bush defended the Iraq war, comparing it to America's actions in Japan following World War II. He argued that by sacrificing the lives of American soldiers in order to bring freedom to Japan, we were able to turn the Japanese into friends and allies; by doing the same in Iraq, we will ensure that the Iraqis one day become allies as well.

But according to Dr. Yaron Brook, "President Bush is twisting history to defend his immoral war. The real lesson of World War II is that American self-defense requires crushing and demoralizing the enemy so that it is non-threatening—not sacrificing the wealth and lives of Americans in order to spread "democracy" and make hostile nations like us.

"The goal of World War II was not Japanese freedom—it was the unconditional surrender of the Japanese war machine. To achieve that goal, America unleashed its full military might against Japan, smashing its infrastructure, and killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese, military and civilian. And because the Japanese had been thoroughly defeated, U.S. troops faced no Japanese insurgency.  America's goal in setting the terms and guiding the creation of a new state was to ensure that defeated Japan remained non-threatening to Americans; the goal was not a selfless mission to serve the needs of the Japanese people.

"President Bush has rejected the lessons of World War II and the goal of U.S. security. Instead of eliminating the threat from states that support the cause of Islamic totalitarianism—particularly its main sponsors in Iran and Saudi Arabia—he sent Americans on a mission to bring the vote to secular Iraq. Instead of crushing and demoralizing our enemies, Bush made our top priority protecting Iraqi civilians, Iraqi infrastructure, and Iraqi religious shrines—sacrificing American troops to that end. Instead of demanding that Iraqis embrace a pro-Western and, thus, non-threatening government, President Bush declared that they have the right to elect a government of their choosing—including a hostile, Islamic state.

"President Bush is wrong. American security does not depend on bringing elections to the Middle East—it depends on making hostile regimes in the  Middle East non-threatening. To achieve that, we need a real war. Not one that substitutes the goal of defeating the enemy with a self-sacrificial crusade for democracy, but one that places no purpose higher than American self-defense. A war like World War II."

Dr. Brook discusses this issue in greater depth in "'Forward Strategy' for Failure," an essay co-written by ARI junior fellow Elan Journo. The essay was published in the Spring 2007 issue of The Objective Standard, and is available here.

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Monday, June 25, 2007

Put the 'Independence' Back in Independence Day by Michael S. Berliner

Posted by ARI Media at 5:54 PM

America's cities and towns will soon fill with parades, fireworks and barbecues, in celebration of the Fourth of July, the 231st birthday of America. But one hopes that the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, but America's leaders and intellectuals have been trying to move us further and further away from the meaning of Independence Day, away from the philosophy that created this country.

What we hear from politicians, intellectuals, and the media is that independence is passé, that we've reached a new age of "interdependence." We hear demands for mandatory "volunteering" to serve others, for sacrifice to the nation. We hear demands from trust-busters that successful companies be punished for being "greedy" and not serving society. But this is not the message of America. It is the direct opposite of why America became a beacon of hope for the truly oppressed throughout the world. They have come here to escape poverty and dictatorship; they have come here to live their own lives, where they aren't owned by the state, the community, or the tribe.

"Independence Day" is a critically important title. It signifies the fundamental meaning of this nation, not just of the holiday. The American Revolution remains unique in human history: a revolution—and a nation—founded on a moral principle, the principle of individual rights. Jefferson at Philadelphia, and Washington at Valley Forge, pledged their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor." For what? Not for mere separation from England, not—like most rebels—for the "freedom" to set up their own tyranny. In fact, Britain's tyranny over the colonists was mild compared to what most current governments do to their citizens.

Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit. Independence was proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence as the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What are these rights? The right to life means that every individual has a right to his own independent life, that one's life belongs to oneself, not to others to use as they see fit.

The right to liberty means the right to freedom of action, to act on one's own judgment, the right not to have a gun pointed at one's head and be forced to do what someone else commands. And the right to the pursuit of happiness means that an individual may properly pursue his own happiness, e.g., his own career, friends, hobbies, and not exist as a mere tool to serve the goals of others. The Founding Fathers did not proclaim a right to the attainment of happiness, knowing full well that such a policy would carry with it the obligation of others to make one happy and result in the enslavement of all to all. The Declaration of Independence was a declaration against servitude, not just servitude to the Crown but servitude to anyone. (That some signers still owned slaves does not negate the fact that they established the philosophy that doomed slavery.)

Political independence is not a primary. It rests on a more fundamental type of independence: the independence of the human mind. It is the ability of a human being to think for himself and guide his own life that makes political independence possible and necessary. The government as envisaged by the Founding Fathers existed to protect the freedom to think and to act on one's thinking. If human beings were unable to reason, to think for themselves, there would be no autonomy or independence for a government to protect. It is this independence that defines the American Revolution and the American spirit.

To the Founding Fathers, there was no authority higher than the individual mind, not King George, not God, not society. Reason, wrote Ethan Allen, is "the only oracle of man," and Thomas Jefferson advised us to "fix reason firmly in her seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God." That is the meaning of independence: trust in your own judgment, in reason; do not sacrifice your mind to the state, the church, the race, the nation, or your neighbors.

Independence is the foundation of America. Independence is what should be celebrated on Independence Day. That is the legacy our Founding Fathers left us. It is a legacy we should keep, not because it is a legacy, but because it is right and just. It has made America the freest and most prosperous country in history.

Michael S. Berliner is co-chairman of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Jamestown: Birthplace of America's Distinctive, Secular Ideal by Eric Daniels

Posted by ARI Media at 12:05 AM

On May 14, America will commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. The occasion provides us with an opportunity to understand and celebrate the distinctive, secular ideal underlying America's freedom and prosperity.

Although many Americans recognize that Jamestown was the first permanent English colony in North America (predating the Pilgrims and Puritans of Massachusetts by over a decade), too many mistakenly view the religious ethos of the New England colonies as the impetus for America's flourishing. But the religious colonists, whose moral outlook stands opposed to our ideals of intellectual and political liberty, merely transplanted Old World ideas to new soil. The New World that promised opportunity and progress had begun in Jamestown, where the defining spirit of American individualism was born.

The Jamestown settlement project began, not as a Puritan escape to pursue and enforce a dogmatic faith, but with a group of profit-seeking investors in London pooling capital in a joint-stock company, a forerunner of our modern corporations. Members of the Virginia Company had organized with the goal of uncovering economic opportunity in North America by finding precious metals and possibly a water route to the Pacific.

The intrepid band of 104 adventurers who survived the Atlantic journey, braved a forbidding wilderness, established Jamestown, and faced extreme peril. In its first fragile decade, Jamestown lost hundreds of settlers to disease, starvation, and war, with casualty rates in one harsh winter reaching 80 percent of the colony. Eventually, under the deft leadership of Captain John Smith, the colony weathered these trials to emerge with renewed resolve. Smith himself had risen from modest circumstances in England to lead these adventurers, and he saw America as a land where his kind of self-reliance could flourish.

Though the Virginia Company found little gold and no sea route to Asia, they soon discovered something vastly more important—that economic opportunity lay wherever men were left free to work and create new wealth. In contrast to the rigid class structure and static economy of Jacobean England, America promised rewards based on individual merit. It was this spirit, and not the Puritan belief in cosmic predestination and unthinking duty to God, that attracted men to pursue their own earthly success in the New World.

"Here every man may be master and owner of his own labor and land," Smith noted in one of his many promotional books intended to attract new settlers to America. "If he have nothing but his hands," he boasted, "he may set up his trade, and by industry quickly grow rich." For Smith and the other early settlers of Jamestown, the profound significance of America lay in the possibility that a man could choose, pursue, and realize his own destiny—it lay in a new ideal of individual liberty.

By the late eighteenth century, under the growing influence of that ideal, the colonists began to resist and protest against British imperial controls on their economic and political freedom, which led to the American Revolution. In framing our constitutional government, the Founders put individualism into political practice by protecting individual rights against the claims of any cleric, monarch, or legislative majority. The new nation's founding ideals had emerged in opposition to the religious morality that entailed obedience to Biblical teachings and authority, conformity to the group, and condemnation of worldliness and material success.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the individualist spirit born in Jamestown brought countless millions to America, each looking to create a better life for himself. Through the years, that spirit has fostered untold prosperity by encouraging self-reliant innovators like Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, or James J. Hill. Its legacy lives on in America today, in anyone who believes that each individual owns his own life and has an inalienable right to pursue his own happiness.

In the centuries since Jamestown, America has thrived because of this distinctive ideal—an ideal in marked contrast not only to America's religious colonies but also to the rest of the world today, where duty to the group or to divine command still subjugates millions.

Americans should pause to celebrate the full significance of the Jamestown anniversary as an opportunity to appreciate and rededicate themselves to America's noble spirit of individualism. Doing so will help remind us of the need to defend this value from those who would compromise or attack it. Doing any less would be an act of injustice to those brave men who helped to shape our most important institutions.

Eric Daniels, PhD, is a Visiting Scholar at the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism at Clemson University, and a guest writer for the Ayn Rand Institute. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Letter from TOS Reader Burgess Laughlin

Posted by TOS Admin at 3:55 PM

To the Editor:

Various TOS articles by Dr. John Lewis have helped me identify the essential nature of the current "War on Terrorism."

One shouldn't be surprised that an entity's actions follow from the entity's nature. As a political entity, the USA is a welfare state. It is taking various actions—military and economic—against individual Islamic terrorists and for "democratic" Muslims.

Just as the welfare bureaucracy of the USA endlessly drains the resources of productive citizens, all in the name of altruism, so the "War on Terrorism" is endlessly draining the resources (and lives) of the USA, all in the name of altruism.

All three essentials are in place in both cases: taxing productive people; altruistic motives; and a perpetual program that, by its very nature, can never be completed.

Sadly, I can also now see that the war (the action) won't change until the USA welfare state (the entity) changes. Actions follow from the nature of the entity.

Thank you, Dr. Lewis.

Burgess Laughlin
 

John Lewis Replies:

Dear Burgess,

Thanks! I certainly agree with this.

I note, for one particular among many, how our welfare state identity affects immigration policy: The welfare state makes every new person an enemy. This was inevitable, once we abandoned freedom and capitalism in favor of slavery and socialism (to whatever degree we have adopted those characteristics). It is also fascinating that while the altruism of the welfare state considers every potential producer to be an enemy, it pretends that every enemy is a potential friend.

The good news here is that the identity of the United States is not metaphysically given; it is the product of the ideas and actions of the individuals in it. We have the political result that we do because American philosophy has collapsed. Our identity has been shaped by philosophy—for better or for worse. The American identity—specifically, its character—is the product of the moral values adopted by individuals, starting with the Founders and leading into the present day. Just as an individual's character is, as Dr. Peikoff identified, a man's nature or identity insofar as it is shaped by the moral values he accepts and automatizes, so it is with America.

We can, of course, adopt better ideas and act on them. The result will be a renewal of the American character as it existed at the Founding, and a Renaissance as has never been seen in history. You, Burgess, and all the other readers of TOS are part of that Renaissance.

Cheers,
John

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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial by Dr. Leonard Peikoff

Posted by ARI Media at 9:56 AM

Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as "materialistic"; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously.

In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American invention. The freedom and prosperity of post Civil War America created the happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this feeling.

Historically, people have always celebrated the winter solstice as the time when the days begin to lengthen, indicating the earth's return to life. Ancient Romans feasted and reveled during the festival of Saturnalia. Early Christians condemned these Roman celebrations—they were waiting for the end of the world and had only scorn for earthly pleasures. By the fourth century the pagans were worshipping the god of the sun on December 25, and the Christians came to a decision: if you can't stop 'em, join 'em. They claimed (contrary to known fact) that the date was Jesus' birthday, and usurped the solstice holiday for their Church.

Even after the Christians stole Christmas, they were ambivalent about it. The holiday was inherently a pro-life festival of earthly renewal, but the Christians preached renunciation, sacrifice, and concern for the next world, not this one. As Cotton Mather, an 18th-century clergyman, put it: "Can you in your consciences think that our Holy Savior is honored by mirth? . . . Shall it be said that at the birth of our Savior . . . we take time . . . to do actions that have much more of hell than of heaven in them?"

Then came the major developments of 19th-century capitalism: industrialization, urbanization, the triumph of science—all of it leading to easy transportation, efficient mail delivery, the widespread publishing of books and magazines, new inventions making life comfortable and exciting, and the rise of entrepreneurs who understood that the way to make a profit was to produce something good and sell it to a mass market.

For the first time, the giving of gifts became a major feature of Christmas. Early Christians denounced gift-giving as a Roman practice, and Puritans called it diabolical. But Americans were not to be deterred. Thanks to capitalism, there was enough wealth to make gifts possible, a great productive apparatus to advertise them and make them available cheaply, and a country so content that men wanted to reach out to their friends and express their enjoyment of life. The whole country took with glee to giving gifts on an unprecedented scale.

Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. There was a St. Nicholas long ago and a feeble holiday connected with him (on December 5). In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick's physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids' stockings, then goes back to the North Pole.

Of course, the Puritans denounced Santa as the Anti-Christ, because he pushed Jesus to the background. Furthermore, Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice—Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.

All the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason, science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.

America's tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is religion and self-sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent. But the spiritual must start with recognizing reality. Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate—and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.

Dr. Leonard Peikoff, who founded the Ayn Rand Institute, is the foremost authority on Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. The Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Copyright © 2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Sunday, October 29, 2006

Why I Will Not Vote for Any Republican

Posted by John David Lewis at 2:56 PM

In the upcoming election, I will not vote for any Republican. My reasons are based on those offered by philosopher Leonard Peikoff, and I agree with him completely. A straight Democratic vote in this election is the only rational choice I can make. I would not, however, vote Republican today even if the issue of government religion was not relevant.

In every area of domestic and foreign policy, the conservatives controlling the Republican Party have expropriated the central tenets of the left, while claiming to be an alternative. This has created a false alternative to the political left, posing as its opposite but supporting the same basic goals. This has sowed massive confusion in people's minds, and limited the American people to a choice of poisons. This confusion is undermining people's capacity to even conceive of a true alternative to the welfare state and military defeat.

The matter becomes all the more urgent , and the consequences more dangerous, when motivated by a civic religion and its claims to supernatural sanction.

The left is of no cultural importance here. They are clearly socialistic at heart, and want America to retreat before the whims of foreigners. It is easy to establish an opposition to them—whenever an alternative has been clear, their failure has been inescapable. But the Republicans, by forming a phony choice, have made it much more difficult to discern a true alternative.

Consider fiscal policy. The conservatives have become outright supporters of the welfare state. Compassionate conservatives have set out to surpass the leftists in spending. Bush has not vetoed a single spending bill, and he ranks with FDR and LBJ as a great financier of the welfare state. To call this triumvirate "free-market," or "pro-business," is an intellectual and political crime. Yet this is what the Bush conservatives claim.

Under Bush, the Department of Education has nearly doubled in size. Attempts to eliminate Social Security have mutated into plans to save it. Private savings accounts will be owned by individuals but controlled by the government. Private medicine will be by cartels, under government controls and grants. Welfare will be distributed by private groups, including churches and other religious organizations, who will seek the approval of government bureaucrats. All of this is in fundamental agreement with the welfare state, even if the form differs from what a leftist might prefer—and its claims to religious sanction give it a power that the left does not have.

Bush, of course, did well to lower the Capital Gains Tax—but does this temporary measure, easily repealed, offset the permanent harm done by an institutionalized Sarbanes-Oxley? Must we save capitalism by jailing CEOs?

Conservative support for the welfare state was once a compromise with the left. This is no longer so. Conservatives are energetically growing the welfare state, and will continue to do so even if the left withers away. On one level, principles of altruism motivate them to demonstrate their goodness through tax and spend. But there is another reason for this commitment: the very fact that the welfare state exists. This, to a true conservative, is sufficient evidence for its legitimacy.

Conservatives conserve. They see a nation's institutions, traditions and moral ideals as the anchor for its society—the glue that holds it all together—and they want to preserve them. For most of history, from the Greeks through Rome, the Middle Ages and into the 18 th century, the glue was seen as the laws and customs of our ancestors, whether the simple virtues of pious farm life, the norms of the Senatorial aristocracy, the dogmas of the church, the prerogatives of the ancien regime, the traditional religious standards, or other established credos. Conservatives do not stand for any content; they stand for preserving that which anchors and stabilizes society—a claim to mystical insights into moral ideals that rise above the petty concerns of life on earth.

In classical Athens, conservators of the traditional standards protected the city against "new gods" by executing Socrates. In Sparta, the divine ideals of the ancient founder Lycurgus were preserved by force. In Rome, Cato advocated the virtues of agrarian life as blessed by the gods; in the Middle Ages popes and monks defended the ideals of the early church; in early modern Europe the kingship and nobility stood against liberal reformers; in our own day, advocates of an old-time civic religion stand against a secular alternative.

In every case, it was the reformer—anyone who wanted to use his mind to find a better way of doing things—who was the enemy of the conservative. The point is not that the reformer was right; in many cases he was not. The point is that the conservatives opposed him because he was a reformer, because he used his mind to question the moral basis of life on earth. He became a danger to the established order.

For a brief moment, however—for a few decades in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—people understood that what defined American life was individualism, the free market and limited government. Conservatives to some degree supported these ideals against progressives and Marxists. People began to think that defending these ideals was the essence of conservatism, and they forgot the more basic nature of conservatism: to conserve traditions qua traditions, to be taken on faith.

Consequently, when the welfare state supplanted limited government and freedom, and showed its resilience in the face of opposition, conservatives became the defenders of the new status quo. That is where we are today. Conservatives of the Bush tribe are now energetic advocates for the welfare state, connecting it to what they call traditional American virtues, meaning altruistic sacrifice, and defending it as the basis for American life.

This is true in domestic policy, but also in military defense. A few decades ago, conservatives wanted to use our military only for our own defense, and with quick and overwhelming force. They set a policy tone that Ronald Reagan claimed as his own. But Reagan retreated from Lebanon, and George Bush, Sr. never did anything without an international consensus. So it is with Bush Jr., who attacked Iraq only after months of building a coalition, and who sees democracy for them—even if based on Islamic Law—as constituting our success. If this sounds more like Woodrow Wilson than Douglas MacArthur, it should.

The conservative platform today is fundamentally indistinguishable from the New Left. Yet conservatives are not as forthright about their socialism. They claim to be pro-business, pro-freedom, and pro-military offense, all the while they act the opposite. They claim the mantle of Barry Goldwater while pushing the policies of FDR and LBJ. They hide the nature of their plans, seeing the route to success as appearing to be A while being non-A.

This has fostered enormous confusion. Say "military offense" and many people will think of Iraq—meaning quagmire and non-victory. Say "free market" and they think of cartels, Enron, and Sarbanes-Oxley as a necessary restraint on "greed." Say "freedom in medicine" and they think of the government-controlled hospitals that offer "choice" with a government handout. Say "private education" and they think of charter schools with public scholarships. Say "fiscal conservatism" and they think of rising deficits, from tax cuts combined with increased spending. Say "morality" and they think of anti-abortion, marriage laws and prayer in schools.

Conservatives have created a fantasy world of appearance, designed to expropriate the programs of the left while wearing the clothing of American freedom. In the end, the idea of a true alternative to the welfare state and military defeat is hacked up and re-stitched into a chimera. The fact that the left has become a cesspool of nihilism does not change the nature of the conservative reaction, or make this package-deal any real alternative.

In my view, if our choice is between two forms of welfare redistribution and military timidity, we would be best off with a president who openly espouses these ideas, and makes no claims to support the opposite. This would not lead to better policies, but it would result in clarity, a point of focus for an opposition, and a better chance for a true alternative to take hold.

Suppose that Al Gore had been elected in the fall of 2000. The 9/11 attacks would have occurred, but there would have been no confusion about what caused them: democratic weakness, not Republican "offense." Gore would have been forced to look strong, in the face of Republican opposition. Welfare-state spending could be blamed on Democratic welfare-statism, not the Republican "free market." Persecution of businessmen could be blamed on Elliot Spitzer, not the "pro-business" philosophy of Alberto Gonzales.

All of this becomes all the more potent when integrated with the core issues of the conservative civic religion: anti-abortion, regulation of biotechnology, control of marriage, and controls on immigration, issues in which some Republicans and Democrats actually differ. Bush saw fit to veto one bill in six years—stem cell research—and to interrupt his vacation to prevent a merciful death for the brain-dead Terry Schiavo. Beyond that, he has never met a government program he did not like.

In the end, a repudiation of these policies cannot occur by rewarding the Bush conservatives with an election victory. This has not worked for the past six years, and it will not work now. To "crush the left" in this election will not hurt the leftists any further—for their collapse is philosophical, not political, and thus far deeper than any election. But a conservative victory now will confirm the present leadership of the Republican Party, and strengthen their hold on it.

Republican Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona is one of the few rational voices here. In his opposition to earmarking—a distinctly conservative form of spending your money—he said "Maybe it'll take two years in the wilderness of being in the political minority. I hope that's not what it takes." But it will—for this will be a necessary step to discrediting the new conservatives and making clear the need for a true alternative to the welfare state and foreign appeasement, and its anchor in civic religion.

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Thursday, September 28, 2006

Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens

Posted by John David Lewis at 5:59 PM

A new book, Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens (London: Duckworth, 2006) deals with the poetry of perhaps the earliest political thinker in history, Solon of Athens. Selected as Chief Official in Athens in 594 BC, he is often credited with laying the groundwork for the political constitution of Classical Athens, through a set of written laws that protected the freedom of the Athenians through a rational, even if ill-defined, legal process. This book considers, on a specialist's, level, Solon's poetry as the first extant political thought from ancient Greece.

About the Book

Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens presents the hypothesis that Solon (ca. 640-560 BC) saw his beloved Athens as a self-governing, self-supporting system akin to the early Greek conceptions of the cosmos. Solon's polis (city-state) functions neither by divine intervention nor the force of a tyrant, but by its own natural, self-governing internal energy. An orderly, understandable polis is founded on the intellectual health of its people, depends upon their acceptance of justice and moderation as orderly norms of life, and leads to the rejection of tyranny and slavery in favor of freedom under written laws. Solon is the thinker who conceives this ideal for the Athenians, and the teacher who brings it to them.

But Solon's views of order are limited; each person in his own life is subject to the arbitrary foibles of moira, the inscrutable fate that governs human life, and that brings us to an unknowable but inevitable death. Solon represents both the new rational, scientific spirit that was sweeping the Aegean—and a return to the fatalism that permeated Greek cultural life. He deserves credit not only as a poet and a lawgiver, but as a thinker who was at the cutting edge of an intellectual revolution.

"John Lewis's Solon the Thinker contains a careful reading of the poetic fragments of Solon—not as poetry, but as political thought. Lewis's interpretation of these poems provides one with a greater understanding and appreciation of the political views of Solon—arguably the first (and only) Presocratic political philosopher—and his place in the history of ideas. Anyone interested in early Greek discussions of the polis, justice, tyranny, slavery, and freedom should find this book worthwhile reading." —Robert Mayhew, Professor of Philosophy, Seton Hall University

"In contrast to scholars who treat Solon's political reforms and his poetry in isolation from each other, John Lewis demonstrates that Solon's poetry is in fact a fertile source of important political ideas such as order, wisdom, moderation, justice, and law. Solon conceptualized freedom as a political ideal in opposition to tyranny, and he viewed the polis as a haven for human beings against the ravages of unrelenting destiny. Solon the Thinker is a major contribution to our appreciation of Solon as a poet and to our understanding of his pivotal role in the development of ancient Greek political thought." —Fred D. Miller, Jr., Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University

Select Passages from the Book

From the Introduction:

"The purpose of this book is to examine the poetic fragments of Solon as early Greek political thought. The focus is on Solon's preserved poetry, not on laws or institutional reforms attributed to him by later writers, and not on his place in a literary or historical tradition. What rises out of Solon's verses is an all-embracing way of looking at his world—a way of understanding Athens and the men in it, of grasping the certainty of justice and the arbitrariness of fate, and of judging rulers both bad and good—that is rooted in a new world-view that was sweeping the Aegean world. His preserved verses, even though fragmentary, often cast in epic form, and motivated by an opaque rhetorical purpose, present an enlightened frame of reference, an energetic moral program, and a well-organized set of ideas. His words mark the birth of thought about the polis as a lawful, just community."

From Chapter One: 'I brought the people together': Solon's Polis as Kosmos

"Such ideas were part and parcel of new forms of thought that were sweeping the Aegean world. In Solon's day, Greek thinkers had begun to search for a singular principle underlying life on earth. This does not mean that they had a cosmology, a systematic view of the earth and the heavens. But their 'world-view' had a meaning more fundamental than cosmology: a basic understanding of how the world operates, and of their place in it. Such a world-view establishes, among other things, whether man is to be a plaything of omnipotent deities, a pawn in a capricious world without consistency, an autonomous being able to control his own fate, or an unstable and ill-defined mixture of these ideas. Such a world-view may be well thought out and explicit, or it may be implicit, unexamined and unconceptualized, expressed as an emotional 'gut feeling' or as an absolute that defies challenge and explanation; it may be riddled with contradictions, but it is implied in any generalization about the nature and purpose of human life in the world.

"For a peasant the world may not extend beyond the closest village, and the cycles of life may be no wider than agricultural seasons, religious festivals and wars. But the world-view of an archaic Greek thinker was expanding, encompassing wider ideas about the nature of life and offering answers to its basic questions… The new understanding was growing out of earlier developments, in which the creative acts of individuals added up to a cultural revolution."

From Chapter Five: 'Moira brings good and evil': Bios and the Failure of Dikç

"There is a searing paradox evident in Solon's claims about the polis, wisdom and human life. On the one hand his verses proclaiming his ability to know the inevitable consequences of human actions in the polis are emboldened with the kind of unalloyed certainty once relegated to the gods alone. As lawgiver he takes over where Dikç [Justice] dare not tread, seeing that which will be and claiming its inevitability in terms that are comprehensive and inescapable. Yet, the inability of any man to see the ultimate end of all things was a common tenet in early Greek thought, and Solon can claim no exception to this rule. Man's noos [mind] is ephemeral, and it is difficult or impossible to know the end of life itself. Solon's verses combine 'Dikç surely comes later' with 'the mind of the immortals is hidden from men', claiming both the ability to know 'what will be', and that 'what will be' is hidden to us. Some readers have argued that a division, or split, exists in his thought, between his revolutionary view of political matters and his traditional view of fate (Moira], and that his poem 13, the Hymn to the Muses, expresses this split. But what is the mess here: is it in Solon's ideas, or our understanding of him?"

From Chapter Seven: 'I set them free': Tyranny, Slavery and Freedom

"It is a serious oversight that Solon's first use of these terms (eleutheros) as political freedom should get so little emphasis. This point cannot be overstressed: Solon's is the first statement of political freedom in all of western thought. His special sense of freedom is its political nature. The word eleutheria exists in texts prior to Solon, but is not understood in distinction from political despotism. The four 'day of freedom' and 'cup of freedom' phrases in the Iliad exhaust Homer's uses of eleuther- forms. The Trojans who cry for eleutheria want to drive off foreign armies, in order to return to despotic rule under their king. Freedom means living under King Priam's rule, and slavery means being taken in personal bondage to work in a far off land. This is not political freedom; it is independence from foreign takeover. Eleuther- terms are otherwise used only rarely in poets before Solon…

"For Solon a free man is an Attic-speaking male whose personal autonomy inside the polis is protected from attacks by his fellows. Solon's poem 36 is the first statement in western thought to base a political order on a distinct idea of justice under enforced written laws, promoted by persuasion rather than divine commandment, and legitimated by a claim to have set its inhabitants free."

Order Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens from Amazon.com.

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Tuesday, September 19, 2006

A Talk by Dr. John Lewis

Posted by Craig Biddle at 6:04 PM

When: Wednesday, September 20, 2006, 7:30pm–10pm
Where: New York University, Kimmel Center, Room 914, 60 Washington Square South NY, NY 10012

Five years after Manhattan was viciously attacked by Islamic holy warriors, the world is still held hostage to their rants and their bombs. Iraq is in turmoil, Syria is emboldened, and Iran, in pursuit of nuclear weapons, intends to wipe Israel off the map and destroy the Great Satan—America. What went wrong?

This lecture will show how our failure to identify the ideology of our enemies—Islamic Totalitarianism—has made it impossible to confront them. Drawing on the lessons of America's victory over Japan, this lecture will challenge us to reject our assumptions about the nature of a "just war," and to demand the removal, by force, of Islamic Totalitarianism—State Islam—from the face of the earth.

Dr. John Lewis is in the Department of History and Political Science at Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio. He holds a PhD in classics from the University of Cambridge, a BA in history from the University of Rhode Island, and an Anthem Fellowship for Objectivist Scholarship. He has taught at the University of London, and was a visiting scholar at Rice University and at Bowling Green State University. Dr. Lewis is consulting editor of The Objective Standard, and has published in numerous classical journals, and in Capitalism Magazine. He is the author of Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens, and is now completing a book, Nothing Less Than Victory: Military Offense and the Lessons of History.

All non-NYU guests must register for the event by sending an email to nyu@objectivistclubs.org.

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Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Gay Marriage and Rights vs. Democracy

Posted by Alan Germani at 1:58 PM

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that the rights of homosexuals can be violated by majority vote. This Reuters piece reports that a popular vote on the issue of gay marriage could occur in 2008. Such a vote would place the rights of Massachusetts homosexuals at the mercy of their neighbors.

One such neighbor, Kristian Mineau of the Massachusetts Family Institute, is "elated" about the opportunity and hopeful that the public referendum will result in the banning of gay marriage. As stated on the Institute's website, "The [Court] finally made the right call when it comes to allowing the people have a voice in our democracy." In this case, having "a voice in our democracy" means that a religiously influenced majority will dictate the kinds of contracts into which consenting adults can enter.

There are no facts of reality to support a prohibition on homosexual marriage. Opposition to it derives principally from the anti-homosexual fiction of religious texts like the Bible, which offers such guidance as this:

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. (Leviticus, 20:13)

The Founding Fathers ignored thousands of pages of such religious hogwash and instead founded the United States on the idea that each man has a right to pursue his own happiness. In order to protect this right from the whims of other men—whether such men consist of a select group of rulers or of a democratic majority of citizens—the founders based our government on the principle of individual rights.

As long as an individual does not violate anyone's rights, there cannot properly be any limitation on how he chooses to achieve his happiness. Homosexual marriage does not violate anyone's rights, thus there is no basis for prohibiting it. By putting the legality of gay marriage up for vote, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is shirking its responsibility to uphold the principle of individual rights. Instead, it is promoting democracy—the dangerous, anti-American idea that rights should be violated if the majority says so.

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Wednesday, June 28, 2006

On a Deluded America

Posted by John David Lewis at 9:26 AM

Diana West has written a fiery op-ed that, on its face, seems to provide a well-needed antidote to the moral platitudes that are preventing America from ridding the world of savage brutes ("Deluded America," Washington Times, June 23, 2006). Certainly the defenders of America will be energized to read:

If we still valued our own men more than the enemy and the "civilians" they hide among—and now I'm talking about the war in Iraq—our tactics would be totally different, and, not incidentally, infinitely more successful. We would drop bombs on city blocks, for example, and not waste men in dangerous house-to-house searches. We would destroy enemy sanctuaries in Syria and Iran and not disarm "insurgents" at perilous checkpoints in hostile Iraqi strongholds.

Ms. West sees the central judgment that is needed to win a defensive war: that our people—our soldiers in particular—are worth more than savages and the "civilians" hiding them. The enemy of rational judgment, and a paralyzing moral premise, is egalitarianism—the idea that all people, cultures, and ideas are equal in value. Ms. West rails against this, but then—unfortunately, sadly, tragically—accepts this same premise herself. In World War II, she writes, we were forced to use horrific violence to defeat the Nazis:

For example, bombing cities, even rail transportation hubs, lay beyond civilized conventions,