Here are a couple of pictures from downtown last night. Forgive the quality – I only had a video camera (which apparently I need further instructions on how to use without making the viewing audience sick), so we grabbed a few still shots from them.
Here’s Rational Jenn, and family (be sure to check out her post on the video she made that was shown at the party):
Here are a couple of other signs referencing Ayn Rand:
(Not that I’m all yearning to fight the “evils” of fractional banking – maybe I’ll post more about that in the future…)
And another sign – it was right behind us, and I tried about 5 times to get a picture of it, but they’d pull it down each time just as I’d start to take a picture:
I got there right at 7, and the place was already packed, and by the time 9:00 rolled around, you couldn’t move an inch, the place was so crowded.
This is the first time I’ve gone to any type of event like this – and I enjoyed it, particularly meeting Rational Jenn, but I’m dubious on the long term results that such a disjointed gathering can produce – there were more causes and ideologies represented than I can name. The one unifying factor was they were all against Obama, and his spending proposals.
It seems to me that being united against a person, or cause, is what caused the current predicament the GOP is currently in. It surged to power against the presidency of Bill Clinton, but when it actually took hold of a governing majority in 2000, it had no underlying philosophy to guide it. We got compassionate conservatism, faith based initiatives, Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, bans on embryonic stem cell research, $632 billion added to the federal budget (ironically small only in comparison to the current administration), the first round of bailouts, and a Republican treasury secretary giving bankers godfather-esque “deals they can’t refuse”. The past 8 years of pratfalls, faceplants and corruption all stemmed from the lack of guiding principles on the right. The essential problem today isn’t a political one – its a deeper seated, and societal, one. It’s a moral problem
The Ayn Rand Center put together a good set of resources for people attending the protest, and they put it quite nicely:
But over the past two centuries, the ideal of individual rights has all but disappeared from public discourse. In its absence has emerged today’s massive regulatory-welfare state, which taxes away nearly half our income, tells us what medicines we can take, what kind of light bulbs to buy, and is rapidly consolidating control over America’s banks, insurance companies, and industrial giants like General Motors.
What happened? Why did we abandon the American ideal? Above all, because the ideal lacked a moral defense.
To uphold the individual’s political right to pursue his own happiness, we must recognize the individual’s moral right to pursue his own happiness. But just try and say such a thing, and the voices will come from all sides–that’s selfish. “It’s selfish to want to plan for your own retirement–what about those who aren’t responsible enough to save? It’s selfish to oppose bailouts for struggling homebuyers–why should they have to move? It’s selfish to earn and keep a lot of money for yourself–what about those struggling to make ends meet?”
And it’s all true: the pursuit of happiness is selfish. That’s why you need the individual freedom of a capitalist system–to pursue your own interests, to act on your own judgment, to make your own life the best it can be. That’s why you need to crusade for individual rights, not just against the latest Washington power grab. To mount such a crusade requires more than protest slogans and picket signs. You must resolve to morally defend the individual’s right to live for his own sake, not as a servant of society. So long as you are willing to concede that self-interest and the profit motive are immoral, and that self-sacrifice for the “common good” is a moral ideal, you will continue to see freedom diminish and prosperity decline.
Above all, the morality of Altruism got us into the mess we are in today. That, more than just the specific plans and proposals being protested yesterday, is what fundamentally must be rejected before America can truly become a free society respectful of individual rights.
Filed under: Objectivism |
