A Note to My Valued Visitors
During the month of July, I will be on “vacation”, sort of. Family will be visiting from out of state…namely, my 4 grandchildren with their mother (my daughter), while their father pursues his doctorate elsewhere.
So, together with my wife and my other 2 NJ grandchildren and their parents, I will be quite busy. So, my posting here may be light. I’ll be back in earnest come August.
In the meantime, I’ll fill the gaps by re-publishing some of my favorite posts that are still relevant today.
Have a great summer!
Mike Zemack
Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has published a flier intended for the upcoming Independence Day round of Tea Parties. Mr. Watkins writes over at Voices for Reason:
"Here is a flyer I wrote for the upcoming Independence Day Tea Parties. Many of those attending today’s Tea Parties are fed up with the assault on freedom they read about in each morning’s paper–but they have no positive alternative to offer. If the Tea Parties are to have a lasting impact it will be because they go from being a grassroots outpouring of frustration to a movement that stands for limited government, individualism, and individual rights. This, I argue, is the value of Atlas Shrugged to Tea Party attendees: it provides a powerful and revolutionary defense of those ideals."
Here is the flier written by Mr. Watkins. A downloadable version is available from the Tea Party page of ARC:
* * *
“I refuse to apologize for my ability–I refuse to apologize for my success–I refuse to apologize for my money.”
The U.S. economy is in shambles, with every nightly newscast bringing word of new government interventions. Americans are alarmed and desperate for answers: How did we get here? How will we recover? That might sound like a description of today’s world, but in fact it’s also a sketch of the world Ayn Rand created in her classic novel Atlas Shrugged.
The Tea Parties testify to the outrage that many Americans feel toward Washington’s explosive growth in the past few decades–especially under Presidents Bush and Obama. Atlas Shrugged not only gives voice to this outrage, it provides both a profound explanation of the cause of today’s crisis–and a positive, radical solution to it.
Why is it that every problem seems to call for increased government intervention at the expense of freedom? Why is it that businessmen inevitably take the blame for any crisis? Why are the most competent, most successful Americans smeared as greedy and selfish? To these questions and many others, Atlas Shrugged gives answers unlike anything you’ve ever heard.
“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns–or dollars. Take your choice–there is no other–and your time is running out.”
* * *
“If we who were the movers, the providers, the benefactors of mankind, were willing to let the brand of evil be stamped upon us, and silently to bear punishment for our virtues–what sort of ‘good’ did we expect to triumph in the world?”
* * *
“Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that’s through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality . . . but to discover it.”
Learn the meaning of these quotes—and the revolutionary ideas behind them—by picking up Atlas Shrugged. Discover why Ayn Rand held that nothing less than a total separation between state and economics can save this country. Discover Ayn Rand’s defense of the individual’s moral right to pursue his own happiness–the indispensable precondition of his political right to pursue his own happiness. Discover a gripping novel that challenges today’s intellectual mainstream and provides an alternative to the anti-freedom ideas that are undermining American liberty.
Discover Atlas Shrugged.
I should add that the "Tea Party" phenomenon is beginning to fray. I have evidence that the never-clearly-focused movement is being infiltrated by people and groups who are either ignorant of, or hostile to, the principle of individual rights. This is why it is not a good idea to unequivacally endorse any "tea party" without knowing the motives of the organizers, because you may end up promoting bad ideas.
Therefor, I urge you to read the opening statement on the web page ARC and the Tea Parties
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