From everyone at The Objective Standard to everyone who thinks, produces, trades, and thereby creates the values on which human life and happiness depend: Thank you.
Thank you, profit-seeking businessmen, for producing and selling everything from groceries to computers to automobiles to electricity. Your work—although often condemned—is, in fact, supremely noble and heroic.
Thank you, scientists and engineers, for discovering and harnessing the elements and laws of nature, thus making possible the countless processes and goods—from air-conditioning to chemotherapy to fracking to fighter jets—that enable us to live and flourish.
Thank you, rational philosophers (especially Aristotle and Ayn Rand), for discovering, clarifying, and communicating crucial facts about the nature of reality, of knowledge, and of the good. Without your thought and work, people would still be in the Dark Ages.
Thank you, American Founders, for establishing a country based on the principle of individual rights and infused with checks and balances that have kept even the barbarians within our gates substantially at bay.
Thank you, rational economists, for elucidating the nature of free markets; the social conditions required for maximal production, trade, and prosperity; and the practicality of capitalism.
Thank you, rational parents, for raising your children with logic and love, and encouraging them to choose and pursue their own creative aims and courses in life.
Thank you, rational teachers, for helping students to learn the essential skills and facts they need in order to become life-loving, independent adults.
Thank you, rational workers of all stripes, for providing the countless specialized services—from janitorial to managerial—that make production and trade possible.
Thank you, military men and women, for protecting the innocent, defending freedom, and eliminating the savages who seek to kill us.
Thank you, rational artists, for producing great literature, movies, music, and all the arts that challenge our minds and fuel our souls.
And thank you readers of TOS for your business and support; we couldn’t do what we do without you.
Have a wonderful, joy-filled Thanksgiving.