As promised, I give you a quote from a close friend and associate of Ayn Rand’s, Dr. Alan Greenspan.

Protection of the consumer against ‘dishonest and unscrupulous business practices’ has become a cardinal ingredient of welfare statism. Left to their own devices, it is alleged, businessmen would attempt to sell unsafe food and drugs, fraudulent securities and shoddy buildings. Thus, it is argued, the Pure Food and Drug Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the numerous building regulatory agencies are indispensable if the consumer is to be protected from the “greed� of the businessman.

But it is precisely the “greed� of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit seeking, which is the unexcelled protector of the consumer.

The hallmark of collectivists is their deep-rooted distrust of freedom and of the free-market process; but it is their advocacy of so-called ‘consumer protection’ that exposes the nature of their basic premises with particular clarity. By preferring force and fear to incentive and reward as a means of human motivation, they confess their view of man as a mindless brute functioning on the range of the moment, whose actual self-interest lies in ‘flying-by-night’ and making ‘quick kills’. They confess their ignorance in the production process, of the wide intellectual context and long-range vision required to maintain a modern industry. They confess their inability to grasp the crucial importance of the moral values which are the motive power of capitalism. Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventive law, snooping bureaucrats and the chronic goad of fear.

Alan Greenspan – The Assault on Integrity – 1963

This is the first two and the last paragraph of that excellent and prophetic essay. In it, he goes on to foretell of the Savings and Loan Scandal and exactly how it would happen.

My other favorite paragraph from this essay is this one,

Government regulation is not an alternative means of protecting the consumer. It does not build quality into goods, or accuracy into information. Its sole ‘contribution’ is to substitute force and fear for incentive as the “protector� of the consumer. The euphemisms of government press releases to the contrary notwithstanding, the basis of regulation is armed force. At the bottom of the endless pile of paperwork which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.

Have a good weekend. We’ll see you all on Monday.

And while people are clamoring about “economic rights�, the concept of political rights is vanishing. It is forgotten that the right to 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 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 passkey for the burglar who seeks to rob them, or a knife for the murderer who wants to cut their throats.

Such is the state of one of today’s most crucial issues: political rights versus “economic rights’. It’s either-or. One destroys the other. But there are, in fact, no “economic rights�, no “collective rights�, no “public-interest rights�. The term “individual rights� is a redundancy: there is no other kind of rights and no one else to possess them.

Ayn Rand: Man’s Rights – 1967

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And that is it for quotes from Rand’s “Man’s Rights” essay. I hope you enjoyed them.

To round out the week, tomorrow we’ll have a special appearance from someone who has been in the news a bit lately that you might not know was a friend of Rand’s.

I think you’ll be surprised.

Shortly thereafter, we’ll start in on another of Rand’s essays, most likely “The Nature of Government” from 1963.

According to such doctrines as the “economic bill of rights�, an individual has no right to dispose of his own material means by the guidance of his own convictions – and must hand over his money indiscriminately to any speakers or propagandists, who have a “Right� to his property.

This means that the ability to provide the material tools for the expression of ideas deprives a man of the right to hold any ideas. It means that a publisher has to publish books he considers worthless, false or evil – that a TV sponsor has to finance the commentators who choose to affront his convictions – that the owner of a newspaper must turn his editorial pages over to any young hooligan who clamors for the enslavement of the press. It means that one group of men acquires the “Right� to unlimited license – while another group is reduced to helpless irresponsibility.

But since it is obviously impossible to provide every claimant with a job, a microphone or a newspaper column, who will determine the “distribution� of “economic rights� and select the recipients, when the owners’ right to choose has been abolished? Well, Mr. Minow has indicated that quite clearly.

And if you make the mistake off thinking that this applies only to big property owners, you had better realize that the theory of “economic rights� includes the “right� of every would-be playwright, every beatnik poet, every noise composer and every non-objective artist (who have political pull) to the financial support you did not give them when you did not attend their shows. What else is the meaning of the project to spend your tax money on subsidized art?

Ayn Rand: Man’s Rights – 1967

Continuing on yesterday’s and Friday’s theme. There is also a link to name you may not recognize, but should know.

The process (of destroying the protections that the Bill of Rights guarantees) consists of ascribing to private citizens the specific violations constitutionally forbidden to the government, which private citizens have no power to commit, and thus freeing the government from all restrictions. The switch is becoming progressively more obvious in the field of free speech. For years, the collectivists have been propagating the notion that a private individual’s refusal to finance an opponent is a violation if the opponent’s right to free speech and an act of “Censorship�.

It is “Censorship� they claim, if a newspaper refuses to employ or publish writers whose ideas are diametrically opposed to its policy.

It is “Censorship� they claim, if businessmen refuse to advertise in a magazine that denounces, insults and smears them.

It is “Censorship� they claim, if a TV sponsor objects to some outrage perpetrated on a program he is financing – such as the incident of Alger Hiss being invited to denounce former Vice-President Nixon.

And then there is Newton N. Minow who declares: “There is censorship by ratings, by advertisers, by networks, by affiliates which reject programming offered to their areas� It is the same Mr. Minnow who threatens to revoke the license of any station that does not comply with his views on programming – and who claims that that is not censorship. Consider the implications of such a trend.

“Censorship� is a term pertaining only to governmental action. No private action is censorship. No private individual or agency can silence a man or suppress a publication; only the government can do so. The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right not to agree, not to listen and not to finance one’s own antagonists.

Ayn Rand: Man’s Right’s – 1967

To violate man’s rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values. Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force. There are two potential violators of man’s rights: the criminal and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to draw a distinction between these two – by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first.

Ayn Rand: Man’s Rights – 1967

The concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not grasped it fully to this day. In accordance with the two theories of ethics, the mystical or the social, some men assert that rights are the gift of god – others that rights are a gift of society. But, in fact, the source of rights in man’s nature.

The Declaration of Independence stated that men “are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights�. Whether one believes that man is the product of a creator or of nature, the issue of man’s origin does not alter the fact that he is an entity of a specific kind – a rational being – that he cannot function successfully under coercion, and that rights are a necessary condition of his particular mode of survival.

Ayn Rand: Man’s Rights 1967

The concept of a ‘right’ pertains only to action – specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.

Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive – of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.

The right to life is the source of all rights – and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the other: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.

Ayn Rand: Man’s Rights – 1967

Ayn Rand: Man’s Rights 1967

The most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States of America was the subordination of society to moral law.

The principle of man’s individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system – as a limitation on the power of the state, as man’s protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first moral society in history.

All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man’s life is his by right (which means: by moral principle and by his nature), that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights.

Ayn Rand: Man’s Rights 1967

Every political system is based on some code of ethics. The dominant ethics of mankind’s history were variants of the altruist-collectivist doctrine which subordinated the individual to some higher authority, either mystical or social. Consequently, most political systems were variants of the same statist tyranny, differing only in degree, not in basic principle, limited only by the accidents of tradition, of chaos, of bloody strife and periodic collapse. Under all such systems, morality was a code applicable to the individual, but not to society. Society was placed outside the moral law, as its embodiment or source or exclusive interpreter – and the inclusion of self-sacrificial devotion to social duty was regarded as the main purpose of ethics in man’s earthly existence.

Since there is no such entity as “society�, since society is only a number of individual men, this meant, in practice, that the rulers of society were exempt from moral law; subject only to traditional rituals, they held total power and exacted blind obedience – on the implicit principle of: “The good of that which is good for society (or for the tribe, the race, the nation), and the ruler’s edicts are its voice on earth.�

Ayn Rand: Man’s Rights – 1967

If one wishes to advocate a free society – that is, capitalism – one must realize that its indispensable foundation is the principle of individual rights. If one wishes to uphold individual rights, one must realize that capitalism is the only system that can uphold and protect them. And if one wishes to gauge the relationship of freedom to the goals of today’s intellectuals, one may gauge it by the fact that the concept of individual rights is evaded, distorted, perverted and seldom discussed, most conspicuously seldom by the so-called “conservatives�.

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

Ayn Rand: Man’s Rights – 1967

Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man’s freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men. Private citizens are not a threat to one another’s rights or freedom. A private citizen who resorts to physical force and violates the rights of others is a criminal – and men have legal protection against him.

Criminals are a small minority in any age or country. And the harm they have done to mankind is infinitesimal when compared to the horrors – the bloodshed, the wars, the persecutions, the confiscations, the famines, the enslavements, the wholesale destructions – perpetrated by mankind’s governments. Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is man’s deadliest enemy. It is not as protection against private actions, but against government actions that the Bill of Rights was written.

Ayn Rand, Man’s Rights