Obama versus Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand once famously said through her character Ellsworth Toohey: “It is always safe to denounce the rich.” In my view, this is true because our culture has a bias against the wealthy individual. In spite of this, ours is the one society in history that has established the freedom that creates the opportunity for people to become rich. This contradiction has created an interesting dynamic: the progressive (liberal) movement whose premise is that those who earn the most are required to pay the most in taxes. It includes politicians who assume that all Americans should make their moral and economic decisions based, not on their own self-interest, but on what the government considers the general well being.

This dynamic is eloquently put forward by Barack Obama, the Democratic Party Presidential nominee in 2008.

“We reward people a lot for being rich, for being famous, for being cute, for being thin… one of the values I think we need to instill in our country, in our children, is a sense of ‘usefulness’, in other words, are we useful, are we making other peoples’ lives a little bit better?”

I think this quote reveals something more than just an identification of how Obama thinks we treat the rich. It reveals an opinion both about how Obama sees the rich and that he views social service as a much more important value than self-interest. In our economy, we decidedly do not reward people for being rich and I’m not sure what Obama means by that. Because of progressive taxation and other onerous punishments of the rich, the rich are effectively tied to a whipping post. We certainly don’t wait for them to be rich and then reward them. In fact, the truth is exactly the opposite of what he states.

Is it possible that Obama has never learned to draw the distinction between hard work and a life of living off his income from serving others? Have his early “organizing” days made it possible for him to live off of donations from others rather than from his own production? Is it possible that all his life he has avoided doing anything truly productive?

In my view, the career politician, as is Obama, is an enigma in our society. Normally, we elevate people to the position of leadership after they have spent their lives actually being successful. Successful businessmen or military men have proven to us that they know how to organize people and win. They are people of accomplishment. They are doers who understand that you can get nothing done without effort and careful deliberation. A career politician on the other hand gets his start by focusing on collective goals, on organizing people around a movement that has an ideological base. Career politicians are good at convincing people that they care about them but they are not good at actually producing valuable goods or protecting citizens. They are good only at appealing to altruism and convincing people that we should vote to create political change; the change that consists of emulating Robin Hood, finding enemies of the people and convincing the people that we need to fight those enemies. Most often those enemies are the people who are rich and have accomplished productive careers.

Obama’s phrasing, in the quote I gave above, reveals that he does not understand that before one can be rich, one must first organize resources and actually perform work. This phrasing may reveal a mindset of Obama’s that doesn’t understand what it takes to become rich because, as an organizer and career politician, he did not take the same road to riches that most of us do. Or it may reveal an attitude that people who work (and become rich) are somehow doing something that is not quite tasteful and refined, which may confirm the elitist attitude for which he is criticized.

I found another example of this attitude when I analyzed Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2004 where he called individualism “famous.”

“The undercurrent that is moving toward more freedom in our country is the last thing the liberals want and the one thing they must prevent...by gaining power. So they will use the language of freedom and patriotism to gain power in order that they can later take that freedom away in a morass of social responsibility and the coercive imposition of socialism. That they are uncomfortable with the language of freedom shows how far they have gone and how radicalized they have become. They are unfit to lead because they have no connection to the practical aspects of leadership. They are a bunch of radicals who have been out of the mainstream in a practical sense for decades and have never actually led...which was a problem for the Clintons as well...and why they lost power. They did not lead. Today, liberals can only educate in our schools and they do a poor job of that because they don't teach skills but instead brainwash children and college students with "socially responsible" ideology. Look at the results.

That Obama called individualism "famous" during his convention speech is the point where the mask drops. Since it is "famous" it must be acknowledged, but for a liberal, individualism is an uncomfortable, almost dirty idea. It wreaks of egoism and "can do" rugged self-alienation...they would feel so uncomfortable around people like that. So they will call it "famous," but that's all they will say that is good about it. That it is "famous" means that it is a factor to be acknowledged and dealt with. Those for whom it is "famous" must be pandered to and fooled into believing that the liberals are really just good ole Americans living the American dream. Don't be fooled; their American dream is at the expense of hard-working Americans and on behalf of the "chosen" few.

They will acknowledge the roots of our nation, sing praises to the power of self-reliance and hard work, call it important because it is important to others, not to them. They will, instead, talk more enthusiastically about the freedom to "sacrifice" and the right to "give to others" in a true "bait and switch." Imagine what they would be saying if the ideas of freedom and rugged individualism had never been "famous." I'm sure you know they'd be talking about the "famous" idea of "to each according to his need, from each according to his ability." We would not have listened to them defending themselves against "false" accusations that they are communists. They would be what they are: communists.”

“[S]omeone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”

A point of major contention in the election campaign and another indication of the attitude of Obama’s true attitude about the rich is the issue of what businessmen do when they move factories overseas.

“Campaigning in Ohio before flying to Wisconsin for an election-eve rally, Mr. Obama said the wealthy had “made out like bandits” under the Bush administration and called for an end to tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas.

“In the last year alone,” Mr. Obama said, “93 plants have closed in this state. And yet, year after year, politicians in Washington sign trade agreements that are riddled with perks for big corporations but have absolutely no protections for American workers. It’s bad for our economy; it’s bad for our country.””

The organizer is coming out in these words. An organizer, of the type that is Obama, is a person who obtains his power through agitation. He invents an atrocity and then convinces the “poor” that they have been unfairly treated. First, he assumes that business enterprises don’t belong to the business owners or “big corporations”; they belong to the people and the “big corporations” have robbed the people of their ability to make a living by keeping their profits rather than investing them in people. This justifies “protections” for the workers that cannot be implemented if the workers are not productive or if other conditions change in the marketplace. These imposed “protections” are nothing more than the meddling of a person who has no idea what it takes to run a corporation.

But you have to ask yourself why plants close and what it means that they do close. Sometimes they close because the labor environment has become so onerous (when unions gain coercive power with the help of liberals like Obama) that the business can no longer create products that compete with other similar products. The business has to close in order to protect the capital investments that the business owners make. This makes it possible for them to re-invest that capital in businesses that are profitable and not unionized. In some cases, the business can only continue to exist if it moves to a location where labor costs are low. If the union is not willing to accommodate the need of the business to pay lower wages, then the plant must move. If it does not do this, it must go out of existence. There is nothing Obama can do about this.

A plant might close because the technology used by the plant has become obsolete and needs to be replaced. Sometimes the new technology is so efficient that it provides jobs for machine operators with technical training. The plant may need to move to an area that has more technically proficient employees while the employees who are not technically proficient must find new jobs.

Sometimes a plant closes because the product it makes is no longer desired by people in the marketplace. Sometimes it closes because government regulations make it impossible for the business to compete against other larger enterprises that are able to afford the costs of government regulations.

The reasons for these closings that I’ve mentioned above are valid and when a company moves overseas or clothes in favor of saving investment capital these moves provide the economy and the poor with a valuable benefit. They save investment capital so it can create other jobs. When the government, unions and organizers like Obama express the attitude that businesses should not be in the business of making a profit but should instead make decisions on the basis of what the community needs, a major disservice is done, not only to the economy, but to the communities. Huge investments made in these businesses are sent down the drain of “community service” and this creates poverty for people who believed in people like Obama. Look at South Chicago today.

If there is no business enterprise left because the business thought first about the workers instead of profit, no one will defend the business. Organizers and socialists who are the culprits in these situations will continue their war against the profit motive.

What does Obama do once he closes the factory by pretending to defend the workers? The destruction machine that he has created can now hoist him up for even more power. He has something new to protest about…the company closing down. After he and organizers like him have caused the business to close, he’ll say: "We believe that there is a place in the American economy for every American's dream. And we know that when we extend that dream of opportunity to more Americans, all of us gain."

The thruth is that none of Obama’s tactics, economic policies or even his hope for a better future, can make every American’s dream possible. Obama creates nothing, produces nothing and can only use the power of government to manipulate business enterprises by means of forcing them to tow the government line. But these businesses must already be productive before any of Obama’s hopes can be realized. It will not be Obama who will make them successful but hard working business owners and productive employees. In fact, the only thing that can make every American’s dream possible is a market free of the manipulations of people like Obama.

“In the speech at the Tax Policy Center, Obama promised to give 150 million American workers a tax break of up to $1,000 and reduce taxes for some 10 million lower income homeowners. Also, the Illinois Democrat said, he would eliminate all income taxes for the estimated 7 million seniors who make less than $50,000 a year.

In New York, nearly 10 million workers and some 486,000 homeowners would see tax relief, says the Obama campaign. At the same time, he would raise top rates for capital gains and dividends up to or near their previous levels of between 20 and 28 percent.

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Lisa Miller, said, "In their '08 budget proposal, Obama and his Democratic colleagues are proposing the largest tax increase in the history of our country, but while on the campaign trail, he promises $80 billion in relief. "Which Obama should we believe?"

Here we have the key to the kind of leadership Obama provides. He is a panderer who makes promises based upon how many votes he can get. Once in power, he will have to cleverly switch his positions in order to break many of his promises. In other words, he’ll try to convince you that he has kept his promises when, in fact, he has done nothing of the kind. His tax policy will be placed solely on the backs of the rich but with a lot of advice from technocrats who will carefully calculate what can be done in order to ensure that the economy doesn’t completely collapse under the weight of his onerous taxes on the rich.

The arguments favoring a progressive income tax are essentially the “technocrat” argument. Government technocrats consider important economic issues on the basis of how the numbers work and what they can accomplish by tweaking tax rates and qualifying incomes. The goal, whether they realize it or not, is to minimize the damage of the tax system by tweaking various factors such as tax rates, tax brackets and exemptions. This approach is essentially a “political” approach where the various groups in the economy exert influences upon politicians in order to advance their own interests. This approach gives the appearance that it is the people who determine the tax system and that everything has been decided democratically. The prevailing opinion is that no one should oppose such a system because it reflects the will of the people.

Ilana Mercer has made my point when she wrote about a proposed national sales tax:

“Once a tax is pushed through it seldom disappears. Last I looked, government at all levels was consuming approximately 47 percent of the national income and growing [this was written in 2002]. A reversal of the trend is almost unheard of among developed nations. To keep the State in style, consumption taxes will have to go through the roof. On the plus side, the consumer can opt out, something he can't do with a tax on income. On the downside, should he "choose" not to purchase, the consumer may starve or be destined to a rather austere life.

In all likelihood, "tax reform" will leave us with the income tax in addition to more consumption taxes. Hopes realistically must be much more modest. Let the idea of a tax reform, for once, engender a discussion about First Principles, the kind Americans of the 19th century had and were capable of having.

However contemptible taxes on consumption are, Frank Chodorov insisted that taxes on income and inheritance were "different in principle from all other taxes." In the seminal work, "The Income Tax: Root of all Evil," he elaborates:

“The government says to the citizen: "Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide."

Fundamentally, taxes on income imply a complete denial of private property, which is what socialism is in all its permutations; it rejects man's absolute and natural right to his property and vests property rights in the political establishment. The 16th Amendment did just that. When they incorporated the Amendment into the Constitution, Americans said a resounding "yes" to socialism.

Make no mistake: What's staving off communism is not the Constitution. If it so chooses, Congress has constitutional imprimatur to raise taxes to 100 percent of income, an odd thing considering the Declaration of Independence vests the source of man's rights in the Creator, not in government. (My comment: I don’t agree that the source of man’s rights is the “Creator” and I think the Constitution was ambivalent on what actually constituted the Creator since you can rationalize that the “Creator” is nature and still honor the Constitution. However, her point is correct; the government is not the source of man’s rights.)

Philosopher Ayn Rand explained the source of man's rights with reference to man's nature. "Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his survival," she wrote in "Atlas Shrugged." Be it the nature of man or divine law, "congressional law" is never the source of man's rights – it is merely entrusted with protecting the rights with which man is imbued.

In order to survive, man must – and it is in his nature to – transform the resources around him by mixing his labor with them and making them his own. Man's labor and his property are extensions of himself. As Chodorov elucidates, the right of ownership is an extension of the right to life. If ownership is not an absolute right but is instead subject to the vagaries of majority vote, then so is the right to life.

Statists will always counter by claiming that if not for the State, man would be unable to produce. Poppycock! Production predates government predation. Government doesn't produce wealth – it only consumes it. What, pray tell, would government have fed off if man were not hard at work well before the advent of the bureaucracy? That's like saying that the tick created the dog! As usual, the statists have it topsy-turvy. First came man – he is the basic unit of society, without which there can be no society. And without man's labor there is no wealth for government to siphon.

However you slice it, there is no moral difference between a lone burglar who steals stuff he doesn't own and an "organized society" that does the same. In a just society, the moral strictures that apply to the individual must also apply to the collective. A society founded on natural rights must not finesse theft.

The Founders intended for government to safeguard man's natural rights. The 16th Amendment gave government a limitless lien on a man's property and, by extension, on his life. The Amendment turned government into the almighty source – rather than the protector – of man's rights and Americans into indentured slaves.”

The technocrats who defend progressive taxation and talk about how best to ensure economic growth while still “siphoning” as much as possible for the government are the statists about which Ms. Mercer is writing. They focus their mathematical skills on finding just the right balance between tax rates and exemptions completely ignoring the debate about whether they have a right to even a penny of our money…and they have no such right.

Politicians like Obama, however, believe the Constitution was flawed because it did not contradict its entire purpose by establishing a mechanism for income redistribution. This is an entirely new form of technocrat. They believe that it is the role of government to fight against selfishness by means of redistributing income from the “rich” to people who never had a chance. Their view of government is that government action is the hand of the general will and that once they, the politicians, gain the levers of power, they will fix that “flaw” in the Constitution as a matter of expressing that general will. The technocracy becomes the fascist state.

Western culture took a wrong turn when the Greeks established democracy. This, as well as the practice of voting into exile the most prominent men, created a form of tyranny which today we call the tyranny of the majority. In response, the Founding Fathers created constitutional rights for individuals that the government could not violate. The very concept of a “right” was intended to keep the majority from imposing cruel and tyrannical treatment upon any individual.

The Founders also, undoubtedly knew about the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau who fostered a concept called the “General Will.” He proposed that the General Will was an expression of reason in the group. Although he tried to derive the General Will from the “Sovereignty” of the individual in nature, he assumed that the General Will would always be right. Although he tried to restrict the General Will to mere principles that would guide legislation, the idea that the General Will where the will of the majority guided government action became very popular. This is collectivism and the key mistake made by Rousseau (and later Kant) is that he assumed that proper moral action of any type must be essentially altruistic and collectivist rather than egoistic and individualist. This premise meant that the General Will would always involve people doing good for others, and therefore people should always want the General Will as an expression of what is good for all.

This mistake entrenched altruism and self-sacrifice in our culture and it paved the way for the very same form of majority rule for which we criticize the Greeks. It meant that government could violate the rights of individuals only if the majority decided to do so. It entrenched altruism into government policy and started our decline from a free constitutional republic onto the slippery slope of ever widening government power, government forced altruism, government programs, progressive taxation and the resulting economic chaos.

Certainly the Founding Fathers, in their elaboration of the concept of individual rights as found in the Bill of Rights, wanted to prevent a majority from imposing its will upon the individual. And I submit that a civil society would not consider it right for the majority to impose taxes (or anything else) on any dissenting individual. Further, a proper society would never accept the idea that the “collective good” which cannot even be defined, is a goal of a free society. If there is such thing as a collective good, it cannot be achieved by the subjugation, enslavement or taxation of a minority. If, as a free man, I do not want to pay taxes, it is my right to dissent and refuse to participate. If the majority voted that I must pay taxes, that act is a violation of my rights as a sovereign individual. If I do not want to participate in Obama's march toward some sort of collective melding of all differences into a coercive "change" that is also my right, regardless of what Michelle Obama says.

Contrary to Rousseau, there is no dynamic, mystical or practical principle that can validly assert that somehow a group can only do what is right. In fact, history has shown the opposite to be the case. Majorities throughout history have done some of the most abominable things. Two of those abominable acts are socialism and progressive taxation.

In a proper society, any desire to collect taxes should only be done among the willing. In other words, in a free society, all associations, decisions and cooperative endeavors can only be undertaken by those who chose to participate. If a group of people wants to pay taxes and send money to the government only those individuals who choose to do so should participate. Those who do not choose to participate are free to do as they please. No argument about the “need” of the government should be more important than the right of an individual to voluntary association and participation. And more importantly, this principle applies to rich and poor equally.

The government violates individual rights when it forcibly takes money from one citizen in the form of taxes and gives it to another person. Our government was not intended to be one that redistributed income. Secondly, many of the proper functions of government do not require a massive bureaucracy and they can be financed by means of use charges and voluntary contributions. Even if we had to fight a major war, the finances for the army would mostly be furnished through the voluntary contributions of the people whose rights are being defended. Progressives have been able to create this massive government we have by dropping the context of what it takes to live a successful life in a free society. By destroying an understanding what a free society requires (freedom and rights), they eventually destroy what the individual needs to live a successful life. Ayn Rand would say that this result is their goal; that progressives do not want to create a dynamic thriving economy but instead seek to destroy the good for being the good. Given Obama’s and Michelle’s statements, I cannot disagree. If we elect Obama, this deeper motivation among the voting public must be the expression of their will to destroy freedom and make successful living impossible. They voted for it, they’ll get it.

As I wrote in my short book, “The Five Worst Ideas in History” about today's progressives:

“If we look at how progressives, skeptics and nihilists operate today, we find that their method of using knowledge reveals the consistency of their inconsistent views. You will notice that these people always argue from negative viewpoints that analyze specific issues out of context. They accomplish their political intention, which is to ensure that people do not see the contradictions in their views, through a selective focus and selective arguments.”

Also “Thinking out of context has created intellectual and psychological disintegration and has led to the personal and moral disintegration of most men living. The uncertainty and insecurity created by this mode of thinking leads to anxiety. Altruism and collectivism become the hallmarks of our society and men are viewed as draft animals who must do as they are told lest they be given the whip (government gun). Why? Altruism drops the context of how man survives (his mind) for the sake of a promiscuous out-of-context self-sacrifice to others (collectivism). Through this process, the collective imposes altruism on an entire society by dropping the context of freedom and free exchange and by introducing force as the arbiter of all social issues.

The problem with out of context thinking (especially with altruism and collectivism) is that it assumes that the individual’s goals, values, ideas and knowledge are meaningless and of no significance. A proper human life requires a consistent context (reality, values, action) and the ability of the individual to relate all of his actions to that context. The individual’s personal value context is the “infrastructure” of his life, the foundation that sets the terms for how he will act and what he will pursue. The personal value context makes it possible for a person to correctly make all the decisions in his life especially the most important ones. When the culture becomes dominated by out of context thinking, the result is the disintegration of living.”

To complete the theme of this article, I’d like to finish the quote in the first paragraph by Ayn Rand. She put into Ellsworth Toohey’s mouth the following:

“It is always safe to denounce the rich. Everyone will help you, the rich first.”

And this, unfortunately, is also true. Everywhere, when the rich are before us, we see that they feel guilt for being rich and too often they bend over backwards to convince us that they are not proud of their riches. Until the rich become proud of being rich, until they know that they represent “The Fountainhead” of all that is good about man, until they fight against the confiscation of their property, people like Barack Obama will receive high praises and total freedom to loot. Until they stop voting for their own demise, they will be their own worst enemy.

The answer to Barack Obama and his redistributing friends is also provided by Ayn Rand. Francisco says to industrialist Hank Rearden in her novel "Atlas Shrugged":

"You, who would not submit to the hardships of nature, but set out to conquer it and placed it in the service of your joy and your comfort—to what have you submitted at the hands of men? You, who know from your work that one bears punishment only for being wrong—what have you been willing to bear and for what reason? All your life, you have heard yourself denounced, not for your faults, but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, not for your mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all those qualities of character which are your highest pride. You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgment and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been called antisocial for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads. You have been called ruthless for the strength and self-discipline of your drive to your purpose. You have been called greedy for the magnificence of your power to create wealth. You, who've expended an inconceivable flow of energy, have been called a parasite. You, who've created abundance where there had been nothing but wastelands and helpless, starving men before you, have been called a robber. You, who've kept them all alive, have been called an exploiter. You, the purest and most moral man among them, have been sneered at as a 'vulgar materialist.' Have you stopped to ask them: by what right?—by what code?—by what standard? No, you have borne it all and kept silent. You bowed to their code and you never upheld your own. You knew what exacting morality was needed to produce a single metal nail, but you let them brand you as immoral. You knew that man needs the strictest code of values to deal with nature, but you thought that you needed no such code to deal with men. You left the deadliest weapon in the hands of your enemies, a weapon you never suspected or understood. Their moral code is their weapon. Ask yourself how deeply and in how many terrible ways you have accepted it. Ask yourself what it is that a code of moral values does to a man's life, and why he can't exist without it, and what happens to him if he accepts the wrong standard, by which the evil is the good. Shall I tell you why you're drawn to me, even though you think you ought to damn me? It's because I'm the first man who has given you what the whole world owes you and what you should have demanded of all men before you dealt with them: a moral sanction."

In conclusion, taxation of individual and corporate incomes should never have been authorized by means of a vote of a majority. And people like Barack Obama who take it for granted that the government has a mandate to establish collectivism should be understood for what they are; people who use force against individuals and their property to accomplish their ill-advised goals. The most moral people in our society are those who produce the very products and services that make our lives easier and more comfortable. They save us thousands of hours of labor, increase our ability to enjoy our lives and make us all more wealthy in the process. It is time they knew it and stood up for themselves. No one else will do it.

Certainly, Obama would not say that he hates the rich. He would never openly criticize people who could vote for him. He might even defend the rich in a private conversation if it meant a vote. Obama calls individualism "famous" but he does not claim to be an individualist. He says we "reward" the rich but he never says they deserve their rewards. He just wants them to be useful and concerned with the whole which would destroy their ability to produce wealth. He wants them to be his draft animals, happy and content that after doing the back breaking work, they'll receive some of the grain they've refined.

[1] The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

[2] http://insmkt.com/planning.htm

[3]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/politics/19dems.html?_r=2&ex=1361163600&en=5ca5abcd8dc27e67&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[4] http://www.nypost.com/seven/09192007/news/nationalnews/tax_the_wealthy___obama.htm

[7] Ibid

[8] The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

[9] Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Obama versus Ayn Rand

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