A Voice of Sanity – RobertRinger.com

To my way of thinking, there is only one solution that speaks to the very heart of how to resuscitate Western civilization without violating anyone’s rights. I refer to it as:

The Liberty Education Solution

Since the true cause of the disintegration of Western culture was a moral revolution, it seems logical to assume that the rise of another Western style civilization can be brought about only through another moral revolution. Such a revolution, of course, would have to be diametrically opposed to the notion that a person is entitled to anything he desires — but not necessarily to capitalism.

Nathaniel Branden underscores this point in his book Judgment Day: My Years With Ayn Rand when he quotes the late and very liberal Bennett Cerf, one-time president of Random House Inc.: “You have to throw welfare programs at people — like throwing meat to a pack of wolves — even if the programs don’t accomplish their alleged purpose and even if they’re morally wrong.”

When Branden asked Cerf why he felt this way, he purportedly whispered, “Because otherwise they’ll kill you. The masses. They hate intelligence. They’re envious of ability. They resent wealth. You’ve got to throw them something, so they’ll let us live.”

This from a hard-core liberal, an icon in the New York book-publishing establishment! And you wonder why people adore candidates who promise to “spread the wealth”? Raw meat is now out. Today’s politicians promise to deliver the meat cooked to your liking — from rare to well done.

Bennett Cerf’s comments to Nathaniel Branden are precisely why I believe that nothing short of a massive undertaking to educate the public about the sanctity of individual rights is necessary. The fact is that morals are not genetically inherited. They are acquired through learning — especially learning by example. Unfortunately, most of the moral examples to which children are exposed are found in their schools. And that presents a huge challenge.

To rediscover the morals, ethics, and values that once served as the foundation of Western civilization, the majority of people in our society must be reeducated. They must be taught to reject the belief that it is moral to violate the rights of others simply by outvoting them. Which means they must learn to challenge the currently unchallenged premise that anything a majority decides is automatically moral.

They must be taught that no matter how compassionate a person may believe himself to be, it does not give him the right to use force against others to achieve his ends. On the contrary, they must be taught that individual sovereignty is the most sacred right of every human being.

This will not be an easy task. For decades, collectivists have given teeth to the moral revolution by translating their immoral objectives into law. And along with this clever inversion of morals, people have been taught to believe that something is moral just because it is “legal” — and have been continually admonished to be “law abiding” citizens. The result is that plunder is accepted as moral simply because it is officially decreed and sanctioned by law.

Through the deployment of gradualism, the egalitarian philosophy has been so ingrained in our thinking that it subtly pervades every area of our lives. And nowhere is it more prevalent than in movies and television. I was never a Star Trek fan, but, years ago, I did happen to see the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. To this day, what sticks in my mind about that film are Dr. Spock’s dying words: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few — or the one.”

This kind of brainwashing enjoys such widespread acceptance today that if one refuses to conform, he does so at the risk of being ostracized by friends and associates. What kind of morals, ethics, and values can a youngster be expected to have when he grows up hearing such communal blather day in and day out?

The subtle erosion of our once sound moral structure has been so successful that it has caused an even greater problem than the mental contamination of the masses: It has soiled the minds of high-profile individuals whose very successes were achieved as a result of our free market foundations.

This, in turn, exacerbates the problem of educating the masses, because the freedom and free market advocates most visible to them tend to base their arguments on a status quo foundation. In other words, they ignore the moral issues. A good example is when supposed conservatives try to defend capitalism by arguing that capitalists are motivated by altruism; i.e., that a capitalist’s real desire is to help others, and, as a by product, he, too, ends up benefiting financially.

In truth, it’s the other way around: In order to achieve his financial objectives, a smart businessperson knows that he must create value for others. Thus, others benefit as a result of his pursuit of his own financial objectives. Adam Smith referred to this phenomenon as the “unintended consequences” of capitalism. Trying to claim that a true capitalist is altruistic insults the intelligence of the average person. Of course the masses do not believe such nonsense, which makes them easy prey for socialist crusaders.

While it is true that capitalism works best for the greatest number of people, that is not a moral justification for it. The moral justification for capitalism is that all men, no matter how rich or how poor, have a right to pursue their own economic well-being and enjoy all the fruits of their labor.

Specifically, all people have a right to trade their goods, services, and labor for any price they can secure in a free market, without interference from the government or anyone else. Freedom from all forms of coercion is a moral objective, regardless of whether or not it helps others.

Put more bluntly, what you earn and what you own is nobody else’s business, including and especially the government’s! That is what individual sovereignty is all about. People must learn that privacy is a moral objective.

As Stephen Rinehart says in Freedom or Altruism: “Civilization is the process toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” Based on Rinehart’s words, it seems clear that we are rapidly becoming a savage society.

More to come in Part IX …