Virtue of Selfishness - Individualism  

Show Notes

• Archived Blog Post

  Date / Time: 11/12/2008 3:45 PM UTC

  Atlas Shrugged
  

  Can you imagine a time and place when independent productive achievers begin to be socially demonized and even punished for their accomplishments?  A country where there is no encouragement or reward for self-reliance and individual achievement, where individual ownership of private property is no longer respected. 
  
  Remember Americans inalienable rights—the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of his own happiness. "Rights are moral principles defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context" ["Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness].
  
  Government should exist only to protect those rights.  The volumes of legislation that infringes on these inalienable rights should be deemed unconstitutional.  Under laissez-faire Capitalism, the government is restricted to using retaliatory force, to protect individual rights—which means the only proper functions of the government are "the police, to protect men from criminals; the military forces, to protect men from foreign invaders; and the law courts, to protect men's property and contracts from breach by force or fraud, and to settle disputes among men according to objectively defined laws." [Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 47]
  
  I am a Christian and God fearing creature of God, but to use God, faith or tradition to defend consertive principles and capitalist self reliance is not what will convince America to stop following and start leading again.  We are a land of opportunities that are endless if we will stop and protect the individual rights of man to pursue their own happiness that is beginning to be demonized by the left wing whackos. 
  
  It has never been, nor should it ever be the right of an individual to expect anything other than protection from the government.  Our move toward a nation of "moochers" and "parasites" may be the direct result of our government representatives playing 'whore' to the "looters" and "pirates" of capitalism, but we mustn't swing into a position of enabling parasites.  Demonizing selfishness, the human trait that can brought into submission by goodwill, conscience and God, is not the answer, and our new president has begun the demonization of it in his campaign.
  
  People of America, wake up!  You must again learn to reason for the reasonable, to know that what is yours is yours, and that every man has a right to keep what they have earned.  I was
  
  • Tags:
  • Rand
  • atlas shrugged
  • john galt
  • conservative
  • capitalism
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