Volume 4, Issue 50
Several current leaders in Congress and potential nominees for Cabinet posts have quoted her writings and philosophy. This is raising concern among progressives.
She rejected Christianity as a faith, adhering to atheism. Yet she included Thomas Aquinas as a philosopher in which she had confidence. The question in this ideological conflict becomes, how does one reconcile the premise of Objectivism with the moral command of Christianity to love your neighbor as yourself?
Why does this matter, one might ask. And what does it have to do with government? The answer is “everything.”
The Founding Fathers cited Natural Law for the authority to declare independence from Great Britain. They championed that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. “We hold these truths to be self-evident” was their foundational imperative. Natural Law was established and ordained by a Creator. In atheistic Objectivism, Natural Law is of man and what mankind declares it to be.
The United States of America has prospered under the government guided by the U.S. Constitution. Rights of all individuals are guaranteed. The Supreme Court is the final arbiter of constitutional rights and conflicts among persons. The rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are therefore protected as equal among all citizens.
Ayn Rand chose laissez-fair capitalism rather than socialism or Marxism to ensure her view of Objectivism. She believed that people should be left to achieve and pursue happiness without restraint and without consideration for the definition or nomenclature of society in general. Government had no role in leveling the playing field.
The problem with viewing Natural Law through the lens of atheism is, at what point does survival of the fittest cease to be the ruling factor of existence? If we are to believe evolution, and in particular Darwinism, survival of the species was based upon superiority and adaptability. As Homo sapiens became the dominant species, all other forms of life became subservient. In the evolution of society, ruling authority developed from chieftains, to tribes, to city-states, to sovereign states. Throughout history, wars were fought to maintain cultural dominance over geopolitical regions based on beliefs, religion, race, and ideology. This continues today. Atheist Objectivists cannot determine when evolutionary Natural Law, absent a Creator, yielded to principles of law.
Leaders of faith, whether deists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, or even agnostics, believe that Natural Law originated in eternity. The debate then is about the definition of the Creator’s endowed rights to individuals. One might ask then, what’s the difference if humans are debating the application of rights? The difference is this. A person of faith believes that all rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are equal among individuals, and in some context, must be protected through due process. Objectivists begin with the premise of survival of the fittest, restrained and conditioned only to maintain the order of society for the good of the individual’s objective.
This struggle for the definition of the rules and order of society has been paramount since the beginning of recorded history.
When mankind determines the definition of Natural Law without the eternal element of a Creator, resulting relationships of cultures and sovereign states often disintegrate into armed conflict. Of all the great wars of history, and most certainly in the 20th century, bloodshed was the result of ideological and cultural conflict based upon man’s views of rights and supremacy.
Since 1776, upon the declaration for a new order of ordained rights by the fledgling United States of America, the rest of the world has struggled to deal with the concepts pronounced and presented. The ideals include: all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; birth is not destiny, and the family is the moral unit of authority in society. The Founding Fathers, in the closing paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, appealed to…“ the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions…”
In this pursuit of eternal principles governing the society of mankind, the United States has never yielded, deterred from, or amended this commitment to ordained rights. The rest of the world has either conformed to our ideals or exists in a state of contortion. Europa, the internal fulcrum of history for a thousand years, formed the European Union in an effort to become the United States of Europe. Modern China, established as a communist country in 1949, openly admitted in 1991 that communism doesn’t work economically and pursued a government economic structure to integrate into the American-led world banking system. The Soviet Union ignored the obvious signs that total government control, without respect for individual freedom, is a failed concept and therein failed itself.
President Elect Donald Trump is now making appointments to his Cabinet that, to progressive critics, are unqualified. Point in case is his recent nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon. The complaint is that he has very little government experience and he has close business ties with Vladimir Putin. Let’s think about this. Those who believe in government first as a priority argue that lack of government experience disqualifies him. Based on what principle? In a totally integrated global economy, the extent of which is greater than at any time in history, perhaps business experience is more important. At least the argument has to be addressed. Progressives like to state a conclusion based on the supposition of their opinion as fact. As to conflicts of interest, former government officials have cultural conflicts with areas of the world that they have represented where they have developed personal relationships with government leaders. Why is this conflict any less than a business conflict?
In the pursuit of righteousness, government activity must maintain a balance between regulation, taxes, and private enterprise. In America, we believe that the right to the pursuit of happiness includes owning and running your own business without onerous restrictions, regulations and edicts from the “king” (government). Libertarianism is an element of merit, but as an objective, it should not be dominant. Equal rights endowed by the Creator is a foundation of righteousness.
Judeo-Christian values declare that an individual is expanded in purpose and potential when interacting through love and respect with others. In loving others as yourself, you actually grow in value to yourself. Society is advanced when God’s principles are proliferated from person to person. Atheistic Objectivism collapses a person to their own individual ability, without any respect for the leveraging effect of others’ talents incorporated for the overall good of the process. Whether debating religion or business-versus-government, each individual, in his or her experiences, has merit and value.
From the perspective of atheism, man was not created for a purpose, but the result of accidental circumstances. Any ultimate definition of the future destination of society, based on a theory that man’s existence is random and that eternal rights are non-existent, is a definition that challenges the very concept of epistemology.
Western Judeo-Christian principles declare that the applied love of God amplifies the collective talents of mankind. Free enterprise as a tenet is to be respected by government. Government facilitation of all people’s rights to the pursuit of happiness within a free market economy is representative of the Concept of 1776. The world is still adjusting to this revolutionary concept. We should not be afraid to allow this adjustment to proceed on course in 2016.
My name is Marc Nuttle and this is what I believe.
What do you believe?