A Saturday Morning Conversation on Freedom

It's Saturday morning, a bit on the dreary side outdoors with the threat of rain, but John Sebastian and the Lovin' Spoonful are spinning their greatest hits in Drive I, a couple of breakfast burritos are history, and there's no one around to derail my train of thought, save me. So here's what I'm thinking about today:

A great multitude of Americans have begun extra reading assignments lately in response to calls for a more enlightened electorate on the principles and values incorporated into the founding of the American Republic.

I am one of them. It seems only reasonable that if we must decide between whether to restore and keep our Republic or toss out the Constitution toward something more "efficient and flexible" we should know, first, what that Republic was supposed to be.

I've always considered myself fairly well read on history and political thought. It was a strong part of my political science studies in college, and well before that I was fortunate to have teachers in high school who directed my attention to books like Allen Drury's "Advise & Consent" and Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." I'm not going to pretend that I understood everything in those books, but I absorbed the larger arguments and it helped prepare me to keep an open mind when my college professors attempted to radicalize me a few years later.

At some point I became too busy living life and dealing with work issues to spend a lot of time reading for leisure, and I think that's probably true for most people. Lately, however, I've realized that there is much, much more to know than I have learned, and some of it is important.

So I re-read "Atlas Shrugged," this time not missing a word or concept. It's an important work. I wish Ayn Rand had had a "come to Jesus moment" in her life, for it would have given her Objectivist philosophy an eternal underpinning, and it would have given her a bit more compassion for the poor fools who continually want to pull humanity down into the Abyss. Nonetheless, Miss Rand had a great deal of enthusiasm for the United States and the American experience.

I'm not sure she understood the Founders very well, or even Constitutional principles, for her works do not reflect that understanding. In "Atlas Shrugged," she mentions the word "Congress" only once that I can find. She calls it "the legislature" throughout. She mentions state and local governments not at all.

What she did understand was the pervasive grasping of those she called "looters" -- collectivists and opportunists of all stripes -- who corrupt both political, academic AND business organizations with a seemingly endless playbook of scheming, high-minded but false rhetoric, and an ability to twist the English language so that up seems to be down, good seems to be evil, and evil seems to be good. (I wonder, did she know that Scripture predicted these days would come? If she had, would it have changed her perception of religionists, who she saw as co-conspirators in the destruction of the works of the complete and ideal human?) Ayn Rand knew the looters well, for she had witnessed the progressive/liberal/socialist/Marxist/communist transformation of her native land, Russia, first hand as a teenager. She knew that, under the guise of working for the good of the people, the looters would not hesitate to promise anything, or do anything, to achieve their goals.

What is alarming, as I re-read the paperback version, is how so much of her fiction seems ripped from the headlines of newspapers and websites today. It is though we somehow managed to avoid her scenario in the 20th Century, only to fall prey to the looters here in the 21st Century. It is this that makes "Atlas Shrugged" extremely compelling reading but, sadly, not for everyone. If you cannot read well, you will probably not make it through the 1,000-plus pages. The effort is worthwhile, however. You will be rewarded with understanding the answer to the question, "Who is John Galt?" and why it could be vitally important in real life, real soon!

The dark philosophy of those who control government in her novel is at one point described as follows. See how closely it fits some of those who are demanding today that there be a cap on salaries, that taxes should be increased to confiscatory levels on "the rich," that there are too many Americans who have too big a "piece of the pie" and must learn to live with less so that others can have more pie:

"You who are innocent enough to believe that the forces let loose in your world today are moved by greed for material plunder ... they do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail. They do not want to live, they want you to die ..."

"It is not your wealth they are after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man. It is a conspiracy without leader or direction, and the random little thugs of the moment who cash in on the agony of one land or another are chance scum riding the torrent from the broken dam of the sewer of centuries, from the reservoir of hatred for reason, for logic, for ability, for achievement, for joy, stored by every whining anti-human who ever preached the superiority of the 'heart' over the mind.

"It is a conspiracy of all those who seek not to live but to get away with living, those who seek to cut just one small corner of reality and are drawn, be feeling, to all the others who are busy cutting other corners -- a conspiracy that unites by links of evasion all those who pursue a zero as a value; the professor who, unable to think, takes pleasure in crippling the minds of his students; the businessman who, take protect his stagnation, seeks pleasure in chaining the ability of competitors, the neurotic who, to defend his self-loathing, takes pleasure in breaking men of self-esteem, the incompetent who takes pleasure in defeating achievement, the mediocrity who takes pleasure in demolishing greatness ..."

If you read these three paragraphs and see a reflection of the insanity of our culture today, where talk show hosts mock both capitalist and Christian ideals with equal disdain, where congressmen (and congresswomen) see no ethical problem with cheating on taxes AND running the IRS, or writing new tax laws, where daily we see new regulations and legislation that threaten the economic lifeblood of our nation's businesses and the ability of American families to cope without government assistance, and we hear of grandiose plans to "save the planet" that will scuttle life in the United States as we have known it ...

If you see a reflection of this insanity, then you are still capable of independent thought. You are one of those who can help reclaim our country from the would-be looters who would just as well see everything owned "in common" through the government than by individuals, and who because they refuse the lessons of history (or to even study) want to condemn us to repeat history's worst tutorials. Because they see misery, they wish us all to become equally miserable.

If you can see the insanity for what it is, you are not insane. Thus you undoubtedly recognize that freedom and responsibility walk hand-in-hand. For the truly free individual does not wish to enslave his neighbor or brother but understands he has a duty to encourage his neighbor and brother to embrace both their own personal freedom and responsibilities. We seek not the equality of misery, which is the only equal result that government can guarantee, but rather equality of opportunity to pursue our lives, our liberty and our happiness, which is the answer to humanity's noblest aspirations, and the only sure path permitted by the laws of Nature's God.

Well, it is now no longer morning, and the Lovin' Spoonful has left the stage to be replaced by Mason Proffitt ("Wanted" 1969), so it is time to finish this post.

If you aren't sure where you stand right now, keep an open mind and keep reading. Try out "The 5,000 Year Leap," which you will find listed on Amazon. It's not difficult reading and, in just the first few chapters, I find it already is yielding many nuggets of wisdom about our nation's founding principles.

We'll talk again.