Random Nuclear Strikes

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
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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