This Labor Day, Celebrate Intellectual Labor

 The United States Department of Labor, speaking on The History of Labor Day, had this to say on its website:

Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

Really? There is no doubt about what is meant here. McGuire was referring to people who “work with their hands”. Is that what built America? Physical labor has existed since time immemorial. What changed in the last two hundred + years that suddenly endowed the American worker with the means to produce “all the grandeur we behold” out of raw, “rude” nature? (Note the word “all”).

The American worker has, indeed, contributed significantly to the American Economic juggernaut. But, it was not because of his labor, as such. It was because of his intellectual mastery of the theoretical and material tools of production provided to him that vastly increased the value of his labor.

Physical labor, as such, has very little value. Slaves can perform it. So can mules pulling hand plows.

Consider my trade, plumbing. If my job is fundamentally physical labor, then any able-bodied person off of the street can wander onto any construction job site and robotically perform the task of installing plumbing systems. He can simply be told: “Run this pipe from here to there”, and it will get done. He has the same muscles and bones, nerves and guts that I have, after all.

That, of course, could never be the case. Performing my task (or any construction trade) requires reliance on previously acquired theoretical knowledge, on-the-job apprenticeship training, the mastery of the tools, materials, and procedures of the trade, and years of learning experience. This is to say nothing of the continuing education that new materials and technologies require of me.

My job is knowledge-based. All modern jobs are, to varying extent. How did that knowledge become imbued in my brain? - by my choice to expend the intellectual effort to acquire it. Even the muscular physical motions my job requires had to be learned by a conscious mental effort that led to the appropriate neurological connections.

Do you still think mere physical labor built this country?

The idea that a laborer “works with his hands” is only superficially true. What directs the motions of his hands? It is his focussed, reasoning mind – if he is a motivated worker who strives to be the best that he can be at his chosen occupation. If not, then that worker is a mere drone.

And that gets directly to the point. The celebration of “labor” as a holiday implies that mindless worker. Labor Day ignores the intellectual root of modern, productive labor. It ignores the intellectual labor of the inventor and entrepreneur that created the worker’s job—and the workers' tools and processes—to begin with, and the intellectual labor that the competent worker must expend to learn to perform his job.

Human knowledge is fleeting, but for the grace of those who came before us and chose to acquire it and pass it on. Knowledge can not be passed on from person to person or generation to generation innately. No one is born with previously discovered knowledge, but rather with a mind that is tabula rasa – a blank slate. To celebrate “all the grandeur we behold”, it is to the discoverer and the acquirers of knowledge that we must pay initial gratitude to. The worker, by learning the skills he needs to perform his job, plays his role in keeping that knowledge train going.

This does not, however, mean that labor is inconsequential. Theoretical knowledge in and of itself has little value, unless and until it is placed into the service of man’s living requirements. The process of turning knowledge into the material values humans need to live and to flourish is dependent upon the contributions of many economic players. The value of each player’s contribution to this productive process varies and is dependent upon many factors. But all through that process – from the discoverer of new knowledge to the final material product put together by the worker – the value added represents, at root, the application of the mind.

“[W]hen you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

“When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think…” (Page 1064)

Labor Day, according to the DOL, was created in 1882. That was the heyday of Karl Marx’s rise to prominence among the American intellectual elite. Marx was the theoretician of “Dialectical Materialism”, the idea that man’s consciousness – his spirit, his intellect, ability, and logic – plays at best a minimal role in the production process. Human beings, according to Marx, are conditioned by the physical world around them, including the means of production like tools and factories, which just happened into existence. Our modern, complex, and advanced industrial society is the product of mindless, conditioned muscular movements, according to Marx (and others). It is owing to the Marxist theory of the mind – i.e., spiritual values - as of little consequence that gave rise to the myth that labor and those that perform it are the primary engines of economic progress.

Labor Day, whether one knows or wants to admit it or not, is an outgrowth of Marxism and the “labor theory of economic value” that so enamored late 19th century American intellectuals.

The DOL concludes its Labor Day salute as follows:

"It is appropriate … that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker."

Not quite. Instead, we should pay tribute to the creator of the American worker.

This Labor Day, we should celebrate not just workers, but those who made our jobs and prosperity possible. This country was not built by physical labor. It was built by intellectual labor applied to physical labor under a system of individual rights that allowed everyone the freedom to think and, above all, to act on his thinking. Instead of patting ourselves on the back for our labor, we “workers” should reflect on the mental efforts that we had to expend in order to acquire the previously discovered knowledge that makes it possible to perform our jobs. We should stop selling ourselves short. Labor Day is an insult to the American Worker.

More importantly, we should give silent thanks to all of those intellectual “laborers” who came before us – the discoverers, the inventors, the investors, the businessmen - who made our well-paying jobs possible.

Instead of Labor Day, we should celebrate Intellectual Labor Day.

Or, better yet, we should celebrate political and economic freedom—i.e., Capitalism – the social system of the United States of America. Capitalism unleashed the individual human mind. It is Capitalism that liberated the inventor, entrepreneur, businessman, and industrialist, who in turn made it possible for the American worker to have acquired the means to rise to middle class status and prosper. The labor movement fought for better working condiditions, shorter work weeks, and the like. But those victories couldn't have been possible without the tools of increased worker productivity and consumer products created by the inventor/entrepreneur/businessman/industrialist, who wouldn't have been possible without capitalism. The labor movement could not have been possible in any other era in human history. Capitalism made the labor movement possible.

It is Capitalism’s liberated human mind that from rude nature has delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.

Capitalism is what I will be quietly rejoicing as I enjoy my long weekend.

Happy Labor Day!!

Related Reading:

Atlas Shrugged—Ayn Rand

To Whom Does the American Worker Owe His Prowess?

Did Unions Create the Middle Class?

QUORA: 'How is becoming a billionaire even possible, chronologically?'

Another View:

Don’t Forget to Celebrate Capital on Labor Day, Too from FEE

"Labor is ennobling because it’s an important source of such values as self-esteem, personal fulfillment, responsibility, accomplishment, and voluntary cooperation. It’s both a vehicle and an outlet for our talents and ambitions. Good parents instinctively teach their children that work is a virtue and a benefit, while idleness and laziness are to be avoided.

"But all of that could also be said of another vital ingredient in our standard of living—capital. Most of us would starve without it. Creating it and then deploying it to increase material wealth is ennobling just as much as labor is, and for the same reasons. The creator and user of capital is furthering his talents and ambitions in the process. And every parent who tells his child to mow the lawn hopes he’ll do it with a piece of capital equipment like a lawn mower instead of his teeth."

[True. But never reverse cause and effect. Without labor -- especially the labor of the mind -- capital is useless. In fact, it doesn't exist.]

Data Centers -- Some Thoughts

Wow! As 2026 arrived, hardly anybody cared or even knew about data centers, it seemed. Suddenly, AI data centers dominate the news—and, unfortunately, not in a good way, despite the enormous benefits these infrastructure projects promise to enable. The explosive anti-data center sentiment is accompanied by a monumental bubble of benefit denialism. There has been almost no coverage of the positives, and they are many and massive (Although this may start to change soon).

In that vein, the Associated Press recently ran an article, Trump keeps embracing data centers even as they become toxic in midterm races. I shared the article on  Facebook with the following caption:

At least Trump is honest and on the right side of this issue, unlike the cowardly politicians who cave in to irrational public hysteria just for a few lousy votes. It's not often these days that I could give a Kudos for Trump. 

In answer to a reader question “But would you want one in your quiet community?", I replied:

Absolutely, for many reasons . . .and completely beside the point. I don’t own “the community.” I only own my property. I would never be part of any NIMBY mob trying to block commerce on someone else's property without good reason. These basically innocuous but vitally important infrastructure projects are being financed by private enterprise, not public tax dollars, and being built on private land by people exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of contract, property, and trade. I have seen no reason to oppose, and plenty to support, data centers. 

The buildout of data centers has been ongoing for more than 30 years, and I worked on the construction of some, including in my area. Suddenly, they're bad? Why? From what I observe, the sudden broad opposition to data centers is mostly ideologically driven by people opposed to free markets and peddling one-sided, massive amounts of miss-information and false claims.

My wife Kathy chimed in with these two comments intended to stress her agreement with me and that we are consistent in our free market principles:

I remember when a builder wanted to use his property across the street from us to build a mixed use community from low income to high income housing….2100 homes. He offered to also build stores and a school and donate the school to the township. Many around us decided to fight the community. We chose not to because we felt it was his private property. The town fought it, but ended up buying the property back and using it for farmland preservation with local and state taxpayer money. Was I happy it didn’t happen? Yes, of course. But both you and I believe that the builder had a right to use his land as he saw fit as long as it wasn’t an actual detriment to its surroundings. 

And . . .,

Another example….Solberg Airport [Readington Township, NJ *]…which flew small aircraft from it…wanted to expand it to accommodate jets. The town threatened to seize the airport using Eminent Domain **…which was stopped by the courts. Would we want jets flying in and out of our town? Of course not. But we supported Solberg Airport on principle that they had the right to do that. The airport has applications pending and we don’t know the current status, but we don’t believe in the theft of land from private property owners. 

* [See my tribute to its founder, Thor Solberg Jr.]

** [I wrote extensively on this hideous attack on the airport. My post on Thor Solberg Jr is followed by numerous links to my posts.]

Related Reading:

The Myth of Technological Unemployment by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey 

The Luddites Were Wrong Then and They're Wrong Now by David Waller 

Automation and Jobs: Perfect Together

The Capitalist Manifesto—Andrew Bernstein

On Socialism and Democracy

This Post appeared on the Facebook page of The Federalist Papers:

DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] Co-Chair Megan Romer did Americans a favor by saying the quiet part out loud.

“We will win by making conditions so intolerable to the ruling class that they would rather give in to our demands than live with the disturbance we cause until we are able to fully seize power ourselves.” [Confirmed]

Read those words again.

This is not a call to persuade voters, win honest debates, or pass legislation through the normal democratic process. It is a declaration that socialists intend to deliberately make life intolerable until people surrender to their demands.

That is what socialists do.

They create disruption, resentment, fear, and economic pain, then present themselves as the solution to the misery they helped produce. The objective is not peaceful coexistence. The objective is power.

Americans should take this threat seriously.

When political activists block roads, occupy buildings, intimidate workers, interfere with law enforcement, destroy property, or attempt to shut down ordinary life, government officials cannot continue treating it as harmless protest. Peaceful protest is a constitutional right. Coercion, vandalism, threats, and organized lawlessness are not.

Anyone who crosses that line should face arrest, prosecution, jail, civil liability, and every other lawful consequence available.

There can be no special exemption because the people causing the disruption claim to be pursuing “social justice.” A crime committed for socialism is still a crime.

The most revealing portion of Romer’s statement is the desire to “fully seize power.” That phrase should destroy the comforting fiction that the DSA is merely seeking a slightly larger welfare state. [My emphasis]

America was founded on limited government, private property, individual liberty, religious freedom, and the right of citizens to live without being ruled by an all-powerful political class.

Socialism attacks every one of those principles.

You cannot claim to love America while working to eliminate the freedoms that make America worth loving. You cannot praise democracy while planning to make life intolerable until your opponents submit.

Believe them when they tell us what they intend to do.

What consequences should people face when political disruption crosses the line into intimidation, destruction, or organized lawlessness?

Source: Commentary magazine, “The Misery Strategy”

The Federalist Papers followed this up in the comments with;

The people calling themselves the enemies of the “ruling class” rarely intend to surrender power once they obtain it. 

This is true. Although the “Democratic” in Democratic Socialism refers to totalitarian democracy—the hideous idea that the right to vote is the most fundamental right that confers on elected politicians unlimited power to do as they please without restraint because they are elected—that same democracy that got Socialism elected can work in reverse, throwing the Socialists out of office. So while the Democratic Socialists (or any dictatorship) will claim their despotic policies are legitimate because instituted democratically, they’ll never submit their rule to voters for continuing validation. After HAMAS won election in Gaza under President Bush’s “Forward Strategy of Freedom,” it immediately canceled all future elections. 

That is why, once in power, the DSA will never allow free and fair elections. They will never allow themselves to be voted out of power. They will either abandon elections altogether or allow only rigged elections (Their advocacy for public funding of elections is a step in that direction). This has been true of Socialism from Vladimir Lenin to Nicolas Maduro. Why? Because elections require certain individual rights—rights to free speech and press, private campaign financing, dissent and opposing ideas, honest debate, association, one-man-one-vote, and so on. For Socialists, it’s not only about power. It’s about principle. They are collectivists. As the 20th Century Socialist Robert L. Heilbroner acknowledged, individual rights fundamentally conflict with Socialism’s collective moral goal—central planning—and thus cannot be allowed. 

Heilbroner, a leading Socialist intellectual and best-selling socialist writer of the 20th century, had no illusions about what Socialism requires. In a Dissent magazine essay titled What is Socialism, Heilbroner wrote:

The rights of individuals to their Millian liberties [are] directly opposed to the basic social commitment to a deliberately embraced collective moral goal… Under socialism, every dissenting voice raises a threat similar to that raised under a democracy by those who preach antidemocracy.

In  The Nature and Logic of Capitalism by Heilbroner wrote; 

Political freedom in modern times has only appeared in capitalist states. Democratic liberties have not yet appeared in any nation that [is] fundamentally anti-capitalist, which is to say within the self-styled Marxist ambit. The . . . separation of realms [politics and economics] creates the essential conditions for political freedom because the state cannot enforce its will though economic sanctions, such as denying work to political dissidents.

Heilbroner also noted that “democratic liberties have not yet appeared, except fleetingly, in any nation that has declared itself to be fundamentally anticapitalist.”

Bolshevik  Communist Vladimir Lenin, the first head of the Soviet Union, banned all other parties and oppositions, internal Communist Party factions, an independent press, and free, fair, and open elections, on the principle that open dissent acted as a counter-revolutionary danger. Socialists use the liberties of free, Capitalist-oriented nations to come to power, then ban those liberties. Socialists can exploit capitalism’s “tolerance of dissent” to gain power, Heilbroner explains in What Is Socialism?, but then must not allow dissent to undermine their power. Once in power, socialists must understand that

Dissents, disagreements, and departures from norms then assume a far more threatening aspect than under bourgeois society, for they hold out the possibility of destroying the very commitment to a moral consensus by which socialist society differs from capitalist.

Nor can we wriggle off this hook by asserting that, among its moral commitments, socialism will choose to include the rights of individuals to their Millian liberties. For that celebration of individualism is directly opposed to the basic socialist commitment to a deliberately embraced collective moral goal.

We can also dispel the delusion that Socialist rule can be anything but total. I quote Heilbroner from What Is Socialism? Page 344:

Socialists have always railed against the invidious striving of the market that forces individuals to subordinate their full personalities to narrow economic roles. Moreover, it is not only the motivations of capitalists that are at stake. . . The issue is the motivation of working people. For the market mechanism is not merely a means to profit. It is also a means to individual betterment by the maximization of one's income. Without this drive, the mechanism will not work. 

But is the drive for private gain compatible with the goal of socialism? I do not see how it can be. The market system, in order to function, requires attitudes of self-seeking that are in direct conflict with the goal of an "other-oriented" society. If socialism seeks to avoid both the anarchy and alienation of capitalism, it must seek to break the hold of the market, not merely over the economy but over the mind.' [Emphasis added.]

Get that? “. . . over the mind,” not only of capitalists but of working people. This is what Socialists mean when they express concern for the “working class”—to break their minds, and spirits, so as to make them “other-oriented” rather than strivers for self-betterment.

This dispels the notion that Socialism is for “working people.” This dispels the notion that Socialism is “only about economics.” Note, again, Romer’s choice of words—”until we are able to fully seize power ourselves.” fully seize power. Clearly, she’s not referring to elective power, which in America is limited. She’s referring to the day after the Democratic Socialists win electoral control of the presidency and Congress—at which point, Hitler style, they end the Constitutional checks on government power, abandon the Declaration of Independence, and establish—seize—full despotism, thus ending rightful liberty in America. That’s why there has never been—not in Soviet Russia; not in Red China; not in Castro’s Cuba; not in North Korea; not in modern Venezuela; not anywhere full Socialism has been established—anything but one-party totalitarianism under Socialism—and philosophically and logically never can be.

RELATED:

QUORA: ‘Would socialism be constitutional in the U. S.?’

Socialism's Totalitarian Nature Cannot Be Obscured by 'Democratic Socialism'

QUORA: ‘Is capitalism voluntary?’

Ralph Peters: “Mesmerized by Elections, We Forgot Freedom”, my essay for The Objective Standard

Mesmerized by Elections, the NJ Star-Ledger Forgot that Tyranny is Tyranny

Democratic Socialism: The Left Escalates America’s Journey to Totalitarianism

Socialism vs. Welfare Statism: Why These Terms Matter

New Jersey’s Racist John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act

New Jersey has gone full collectivist—especially racist—on the Democratic process. On July 2, 2026, Governor Mikie Sherrill signed the John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act.

What does that law do? According to the AI summary of BillTrack50,

This bill, known as the "John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act of New Jersey," aims to strengthen voting rights and prevent voter suppression and dilution, particularly for "protected classes" which include racial, color, or language-minority groups. It establishes the public policy of New Jersey to maximize voter participation and ensure equal opportunity for all eligible voters, especially those in protected classes, to engage in the political process. [my emphasis]

This is a reaction to the SCOTUS ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which overturned a racially gerrymandered Congressional district because it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits voter discrimination on the basis of race, color, or membership in language minority groups. 

The Left’s hysterical mantra has been that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been neutered, eviscerated, weakened, or even repealed, even though no one’s rights have been weakened, compromised, or otherwise violated. We had, and still have, equal voting rights for all—the proverbial, ironclad rule “one man, one vote” principle.

No one has been restricted from “engaging in the political process,” which involves more than voting, like campaign donations, issue advocacy, campaigning for a candidate, or debating fellow citizens. (It’s interesting that Democrats would use that terminology, since it is they who would restrict people from engaging in the political process, through various campaign finance legal restrictions, and fighting to overturn pro-free speech SCOTUS rulings like Citizen’s United.)

So, what gives?

The Left has snuck in a sinister gimmick—switching the concept of voting rights from the individual to the collective. Reread the summary of the NJ law. There are no, and cannot be, “protected classes” in the United States of America. America is explicitly a nation built on the unalienable rights of the individual, not the group, and for which our government is legally bound to secure equally for all. But by the Left’s standards, certain groups or classes get the special privilege of being virtually guaranteed the election of politicians of its favored race, skin complexion, or language. (What of ideas, policy, character, or political philosophy of the candidates?) And what of the individuals who make up the dissenting minorities within those privileged classes, who have no such guarantee? What of un-”protected” classes? What of the equal protection of the laws? What is the unsaid premise behind such hideous laws as that of New Jersey, which are intended to rig certain elections in favor of certain politically privileged “protected” voting demographics? That unsaid premise amounts to, “All voters are equal, but some voters are more equal than others.”

There are no, and can logically never be, such a thing as collectivized voting rights, or collectivized rights of any kind. As the great American philosopher Ayn Rand has observed, 

Any group or collective, large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the rights of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary, individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking. Every legitimate group undertaking is based on the participants' right of free association and free trade. (By legitimate, I mean: noncriminal and freely formed, that is, a group which no one was forced to join.)

The notion of collective rights (the notion that rights belong to groups, not to individuals) means that rights belong to some men, but not to others; that some men have the right to dispose of others in any manner they please and that the criterion of such privileged position consists of numerical superiority.

Nothing can ever justify or validate such a doctrine and no one ever has. Like the altruist morality from which it is derived, this doctrine rests on mysticism: either on the old-fashioned mysticism of faith in supernatural edicts, like The Divine Right of Kings or on the social mystique of modern collectivists who see society as a super-organism, as some supernatural entity apart from and superior to the sum of its individual members.

Of course, the “protected classes” are created by political fiat—i.e., by force—in which no individual member of that group was given a chance to consent or not. Thus, the “protected classes” are groups of individuals who are forced to join, whether they choose to or not.

Oh, well. It makes perfect sense from the standpoint of the Left’s long-held tribal narrative—That so-called “people of color” are an inferior human breed who need government favoritism to make it in a free society. As I noted in a Facebook post:

The violent Leftist reaction to the ruling also affirms the fundamental racial/collectivist orientation of the Left and the Democratic Party (I deliberately chose the NYT article to demonstrate this). That political block sees every issue through a lens of race. But, MEMO to the Left: dark skinned people are INDIVIDUALS, each with a mind of their own, capable of deciding FOR THEMSELVES how to vote, just like every other person. They are not some homogenous colored herd with some collective brain that they must be told they must follow.

Don’t believe the way most of the press is characterizing this ruling. This [SCOTUS] decision is a great outcome.

To demonstrate how the misrepresentation gets traction, consider the wording of these clips. From Supreme Court no ‘rubber stamp’ for Trump, Kagan says

While standing up for her conservative colleagues, Kagan did express disappointment with many of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, including what she termed the “evisceration of the Voting Rights Act.” 

The link connects to a Politico report:

From Supreme Court limits Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court significantly narrowed a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in a 6-3 ruling Wednesday, further eroding the impact of the landmark civil rights-era law.

For decades, Section 2 — a provision that broadly outlawed discrimination in voting on the basis of race — has been interpreted to allow, and sometimes demand, the use of race-conscious data in redistricting, to protect the voting power of minorities.

Note the glaring contradiction. The “key provision” that was allegedly “significantly narrowed” was Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. But it was not actually Section 2 that was narrowed. It was a particular interpretation of Section 2—an interpretation that actually twisted the Voting Rights Act “to allow, and sometimes demand, the use of race-conscious data in redistricting, to protect the voting power of minorities” rather than individuals, a provision that is not found anywhere in the actual 1965 Act. What does the Act actually say?

Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act “prohibits voting practices or procedures [like redistricting?] that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups identified in Section 4(f)(2) of the Act. Most of the cases arising under Section 2 since its enactment involved challenges to at-large election schemes, but the section's prohibition against discrimination in voting applies nationwide to any voting standard, practice, or procedure that results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. Section 2 is permanent and has no expiration date as do certain other provisions of the Voting Rights Act. [My emphasis]

New Jersey’s new John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act, which is intended as a counterweight to the “voter suppressing” SCOTUS ruling, is actually a hideous law that actually weakens the voting rights of individuals.

Clearly, Politico’s reporting is the most accurate. Note that the Act refers to “the right of any citizen to vote,” NOT the “right” of any citizen to rig an election so someone of his race or color can win. No citizen’s right to cast his vote was denied, abridged, or “eviscerated” by the SCOTUS ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. What was eviscerated was the hideous practice of race-based redistricting—a resounding victory for the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the equal right of all citizens to vote.

Related Reading:

Woke Redistricting Madness in NJ

Did SCOTUS Promote or Reject Racism in Alabama Redistricting Case?

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice by Craig Biddle for The objective Standard

July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased

 

“It is . . . from the perspective of the bloody millennia of mankind's history . . . that I want you to look at the birth of a miracle: the United States of America. If it is ever proper for men to kneel, we should kneel when we read the Declaration of Independence."—Ayn Rand

The Fourth of July is a national holiday that, to me, stands far above all of the others. It represents the greatest political achievement in world history. More than that, the birth of the United States of America represents a towering and unprecedented philosophical achievement. America, born of the Enlightenment, is the first nation founded on the principle that man the individual has a fundamental, inalienable right to his own life, and that government’s responsibility is to protect that right…that the people act by right, while the government acts by permission.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

So opened the document that marked the starting point of the United States of America as a sovereign nation. Above are the most radical words ever written as the foundation for a nation. For the first time in human history, a government was to be the servant of the people, by conscious design and on principle. “The people” were understood to be, not a collective, but a collection of sovereign individuals recognized as possessing unalienable individual rights to his own life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness. America was the triumph of reason, which was understood to be a faculty of every individual. The government would now be charged with the task of—not ruling—but protecting every individual’s freedom to act on his own sovereign, reasoning mind … as a matter of unalienable right.

The birth of America was the culmination of Mankind’s long tortuous philosophical journey that began with Aristotle, and continued through his rebirth via Aquinas, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, and the Enlightenment. Tribalism was to be swept into the dustbin of history, along with “The Divine Right of Kings” and all manner of omnipotent ruler. Men—meaning all people, average people, the “common man”—would be set free from the forcible domination of other men. Every individual would be free—not by permission of some King, cleric, lord, oligopoly, majority, or tribal chief—but by moral right. Rights don’t come from government, the Founders held. Rights precede government; then “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”—“just powers” being understood to be only those limited powers required to carry out the job of protecting individual rights, not the power to violate rights by redistributing private wealth, regulating our lives, and the like.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence, America’s Founding Fathers, were not conservative in any fundamental sense. They were radicals in the complete and honorable sense: They represented a concept entirely new to mankind. Standing up against the tide of history, with only the winds of the ideas of John Locke and the Enlightenment thinkers at their backs, and reflecting the moral revolution that had taken place in the American mind in the decade prior to 1776, this unique group of intellectuals took action. Indeed, the ideological radicalism of the ideas to which they pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor turned to actual armed rebellion. The rest, as is said, is history.

America’s Founding was flawed in many respects - the failure to eradicate the ancient evil of slavery from American soil until 7 decades after the ratification of the Constitution being the most obvious and most egregious. The anti-slavery forces simply did not have the strength to defeat that vampire at the outset, and so slavery lingered into the young nation. But the moral groundwork had been laid – that all men are created equal – and the fate of the slave states was sealed. 89 years after the signing of the Declaration, America’s Founding ideals caught up with the slave states. Reactionaries have pointed to America’s early history of slavery as proof of its basic depravity—its “Original Sin.” In fact, slavery was a birth defect, inherited from Mankind’s past. In fact, the defeat of slavery represented one of America’s finest hours, and a testament to the formidable power of its ideals. There were other birth defects, most notably the second class status of women. Indeed, those ideals underpinned freedom’s progress in regards to women’s suffrage and property rights, the defeat of Jim Crow segregation laws, the mid-20th Century Civil Rights movement, the end of black voter suppression laws, and marriage equality for gay people.

America’s Founding was the most monumental political achievement in world history. America is currently backsliding from its Founding ideals, heading in the direction of collectivism and statism. But we have the means to reverse that trend, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, which serves as the philosophic blueprint for our Constitution. As Harvey Milk, one of the early leaders in the “Gay Pride” fight for equal rights for gays, said at a 1978 speech,

In the Declaration of Independence it is written 'All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights . . . .' That’s what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words from the Declaration of Independence.

Indeed, the words of July 4, 1776 have been written. Ratified on July 4, signed on August 2, the Declaration of Independence will never be erased. But its ideals can be forgotten, twisted, evaded, or ignored. We can not let that happen. The Fourth of July reminds us that the fight for freedom is a philosophical fight—a long term, never-ending fight—fought not on foreign military battlefields but right here at home, on the intellectual battleground of ideas. Freedom can not be won and secured by the sword. It can only be won by the pen. It’s not enough to merely uphold the U.S. Constitution, either in its original form or in its current allegedly “living” form. We must remember and reassert “The Conscience of the Constitution,” as one scholar called the Declaration of Independence. It is indispensable intellectual ammunition for those of us fighting to establish the fully free society that the Founders envisioned and came close to achieving.

Proof of the moral and practical power and viability of individual liberty is written across the brief span of the past 250 years. The ideas of reason, individualism, and capitalism have been unleashed. The philosophical foundation for an American rebirth has been laid by a Twentieth Century philosopher/novelist whom I call America's Last Founding Father—quoted above—and the final route of statism is tantalizingly close—yet still so far.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

By closing out the Declaration with that pledge, those great men of 1776 declared that they would accept no substitute for the ideals in which they believed. As the world watched, they laid it all on the line—their property, their families, their lives—for those ideals. They would succeed or perish. That utterly uncompromising stand gave us the United States of America. The least we could do in honor of these Founding Fathers is to pledge to recommit to and uphold those principles, to roll back the compromises that are undermining them, and to accept no substitute.

Happy Birthday—and long live—the United States of America.

Related Reading:

The Declaration of Independence

Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence—Onkar Ghate

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty – Timothy Sandefur 

America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It - C. Bradley Thompson

A Revolution of “Minds and Hearts” - Paul Meany

Juneteenth, the Offspring of the Fourth of July