Just as the notion that “Anything I do is right because I choose to do it,” is not a moral principle, but a negation of morality – so the notion that “Anything society does is right because society chose to do it,” is not a moral principle but a negation of moral principles...”
Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression “individual rights” is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today’s intellectual chaos). But the expression “collective rights” is a contradiction in terms.
A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights he does possess.
Any group that does not recognize this principle [of individual rights] is not an association, but a gang or a mob. Any doctrine of group activities that does not recognize individual rights is a doctrine of mob rule or legalized lynching.
[T]his doctrine [of collective rights] rests on mysticism...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.
A nation, like any other group, is only a number of individuals and can have no rights other than the rights of its individual citizens.
Just as an individual’s right of free action does not include the right to commit crimes (that is, to violate the rights of others), so the right of a nation to determine its own form of government does not include the right to establish a slave society (that is, to legalize the enslavement of some men to others). There is no such thing as “the right to enslave.”
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
--from the essay Collectivized “Rights” (June 1963), by Ayn Rand
She essentially writes for those who think, meaning those who know to choose and own it. They are in minority. The majority are non-thinking choosers who are guided by Winand papers or Tooheys, which apparently offers "something for nothing"! This is the foundation of all the Democracies across the globe, whose main stone & mortar is socialism, altruism.
ReplyDeleteRand's theories of philosophy are much more difficult to comprehend and absorb than Einstein's theories of physics. So, it is inevitable that it would take a century to permeat the general public.
Unknown -- I don't think Ayn Rand's theories are all that hard to comprehend. It's just that unlike the ideas of physics and Einstein, people have been politically brainwashed over a lifetime to believe in welfare statism -- and not in social libertarianism and economic capitalism.
DeleteI also think the Objectivists and libertarians are poor advocates for freedom. If you want to see a radically superior alternative, check out my new book!
https://www.amazon.com/Politics-ONE-Lesson-Kyrel-Zantonavitch/dp/B09BY853WG/