This July 4th brings unprecedented significance. It’s not that I’ve taken the American essence for granted, but that only in recent years have I formed a sense for how far we’ve strayed from our roots – and how few realize it. The fourth is the holiday for those who love life and freedom and I’ve never granted it proper acknowledgment, appropriate consideration or adequate participation.

All cliché’s aside, today’s America is a fading remnant of its splendorous infancy. We’re marching full-throttle into the stagnant misery associated with every collectivist nation throughout history, and we mostly just bicker about the trivial details along the way.

No longer does America stand for the individual – but the collective. No longer does an individual have the right to contract as he sees fit, to deal and trade with others as voluntary entities to mutual benefit – but must ask the state’s permission and guidelines for virtually every step of daily barter. No longer do individuals enjoy the security of property rights – but must fear that at any moment the statist grip might reign down and seize at will. No longer do we value objectivity in our courts – but champion diversity and compassion. No longer do bad decisions affect only the responsible parties – but the results are forced on all. No longer do we accept the notion that freedom enables individuals the potential to offend – but we strive to legally gag and bound any thought, word or action that might be offensive. No longer does the rule of law stand to protect individual rights – but embodies the primary culprit trampling them.

Let’s be clear – this is certainly not a partisan rant. Yes, the current central-planning administration is forcing horribly destructive policies on this country, but theirs is merely the foremost layer of putrid icing on a cake baking in the statist oven for the past 100 years. At best, the alternate candidate (current and previous administrations) might have possibly been marginally better in a few areas, but unlikely to offer any essential difference. Each would be equally prone to enact the same destructive policies, differing only in minor details. Those who contend that their party is not responsible should check their premises and consult history.

For us to return to the society achieved by our founders, America must resort to her roots. We must resurrect that spark of individual motivation, intuition and responsibility that underlined a nation of laws not men. We must discard the notion that mans purpose is to live for the sake of others. We must abandon the premise that the individual is subordinate to the state. We must reestablish the right and honor of parents to education their children. We must reject the premise that one man is entitled to any portion of the life of another, for any reason. We must get the state out of our schools, hospitals, businesses, cars, homes, minds, and bedrooms. We must realize that theft is morally wrong, whether committed by one man against another or by congressional committee according to consensus. We must return to the era of individual rights.

There are tremendously harmful movements currently in place; the final step in socialized medicine (we’re pretty much there already), gigantic steps to impose environmental regulations on individuals and businesses (potent enough to destroy a healthy economy and deadly to a crippled one), and the continued crusade to disarm American citizens; all pose very serious threats to the existence of this country as we know it – all are diametrically opposed to the founding principles of this nation.

Now is most certainly not the time to be passive, polite or complacent. Now is not the time to ‘turn the other cheek’. The contrasting ideals facing this country are not merely differences of opinion; they are life changing, way-of-life changing, nation-crumbling historical missteps. We are at a crossroad and currently pointing to a very dark place that will leave us yearning for the past.

The individuals who thought, fought and died for this country are responsible for the most glorious achievement in the history of man - glorious precisely because America is the only country founded on the moral basis of individual rights. Individual rights are the only possible basis and the logical underpinning for any system considered under the context of freedom. Our founders had the wisdom and forethought to devise a social structure based on these rights and the sense to realize that such a nation was worth fighting for. To these men, not only was it worth abandonment from their family, everyday routine, and livelihood, it was worth the price of their life – and not as a selfless sacrifice, but as a refusal to live under an inferior system.

The system they envisioned was and still is the only one suitable for proper human existence – where man has the right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness, and with Government’s only proper role as the protector of those rights.

From now on I’ll meet the 4th with the earnest reverence it demands. And now more than ever, we must diligently consider our country’s path and the issues that face us through the lens of our founding ideals and in the context of individual rights. I urge any of you who value life, freedom and joy to do the same. We simply cannot continue our current route – reality cannot be evaded.

Isn’t one that Obama can understand:

“The reason that we want to do this, change our tax code, is not because I have anything against the rich,” Obama said in Sarasota, Fla., yesterday. “I love rich people! I want all of you to be rich. Go for it. That’s the American dream, that’s the American way, that’s terrific.

“The point is, though, that — and it’s not just charity, it’s not just that I want to help the middle class and working people who are trying to get in the middle class — it’s that when we actually make sure that everybody’s got a shot – when young people can all go to college, when everybody’s got decent health care, when everybody’s got a little more money at the end of the month – then guess what? Everybody starts spending that money, they decide maybe I can afford a new car, maybe I can afford a computer for my child. They can buy the products and services that businesses are selling and everybody is better off. All boats rise. That’s what happened in the 1990s, that’s what we need to restore. And that’s what I’m gonna do as president of the United States of America.

“John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic,” Obama continued. “You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.”

He gives his political opponents way too much credit. McPalin doesn’t understand selfishness as a virtue any more than Obama. Capitalism or Socialism, selfishness or selflessness, life or death - take your pick, you can’t have both.

The preemptive race card is already being tossed out by the Kindergarten Party (HT) at the notion of an Obama loss.  An especially pathetic example is this garbage by Jacob Weisberg - the collectivist editor at Slate.com.

This is the second (that I’ve noticed) race-baiting read on Slate in the past few weeks - at least they’re consistent.  Weisberg alternates between two distinct tactics - 1) smear McCain based on age and his (alleged) lack of collectivist enlightenment, and 2) smear anyone even glancing at the thought of not pulling the Obama lever as a Klan member.

Both tactics are transparent, illogical and void of intellectual merit - standard leftist prattling.  A few quotes…

Obama has built a crack political operation, raised record sums, and inspired millions with his eloquence and vision. McCain has struggled with a fractious campaign team, lacks clarity and discipline, and remains a stranger to charisma. Yet at the moment, the two of them appear to be tied. What gives?

Hmmm… perhaps it could be that while McCain is just as bad, he manages to maintain a slightly more resilient cloak over his vision (i.e., his desire to destroy virtually every freedom that led to the greatness of our nation).  They both prescribe compulsory compassion and sacrifice as the answer.  Both are fully willing, and unfortunately capable, of inflicting massive economic destruction as they trample rights in their quest to reform and pressure (force by gunpoint) their altruist vision on America.

If you break the numbers down, the reason Obama isn’t ahead right now is that he trails badly among one group, older white voters. He does so for a simple reason: the color of his skin.

Or, considering older whites statistically are the most educated and wealthy, maybe A) they see through the bullshit of his entire campaign, or B) they realize that his socialized welfare-state vision cost money, and they’re the ones who’ll be paying for it.

Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America. But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world’s judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn’t put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.

Sorry Jacob, putting a individual of a particular race into office won’t resolve the philosophical cancer at the root of racism.  Buying votes through class-warfare and income redistribution bribery will only breed more non-thinking idiots prone to taking intellectual shortcuts.

Racism is an intellectual shortcut driven by laziness or stupidity.  A collectivist takes the quick and easy route in dealing with others by choosing to derive elements of their character by group-based inheritance.  Unfortunately, just as inheritance in object-oriented programming, not all attributes are guaranteed to withstand becoming concrete from abstraction.  As Ayn Rand wrote:

A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race—and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.

Invoking or establishing the awareness to deal with another human as an individual requires one to have the philosophic underpinnings needed to see men as individuals who should be valued according to their minds.  Considering the philosophic bankruptcy of our world and the deliberate indoctrination resulting from near universal acceptance of the collectivist mindset, most people stand little chance to hold a fundamental appreciation of individual sovereignty.

Objectivism is the only school of thought that involves such appreciation and applies it consistently.

The only way to eliminate racist ignorance will be for Americans to (re)discover the value of the individual.  To celebrate a charming vote-buying champion with the phony symbolism of monumental achievement does nothing more than perpetuate the group-think mentality responsible for the ignorance they wish to defeat.

If we continue on our present path our children will grow up thinking of freedom as a myth.  In a nation riddled with government meddling we’ll have equal opportunity for sure - very little of it.   Since collectivists deny reason (causality, justice etc.) and derive self-esteem from the sum opinion of others, Jacob’s emphasis on the world’s opinion seems fitting.

As a brief tangent, I find it important to distinguish racism, a broad implementation of collectivism, from stereotyping, a classification or initial conclusion based on social or cultural patterns.  If I drive through a rough part of town and see a group of shady characters, I absolutely assume many conclusions based on stereotypes.  Extending well beyond race (which the criteria for such conclusions could but doesn’t necessarily include), any attribute that pertains to the setting or an entity within is considered. This is not intellectual laziness.  This is thoughtful perception - especially when such stereotypes include a premise of significant profit or loss to the beholder.  A individualist-minded observer would realize that any one of those thugs *could* represent the epitome of reasonable ingenuity - despite the odds.

You may or may not agree with Obama’s policy prescriptions, but they are, by and large, serious attempts to deal with the biggest issues we face: a failing health care system, oil dependency, income stagnation, and climate change. To the rest of the world, a rejection of the promise he represents wouldn’t just be an odd choice by the United States. It would be taken for what it would be: sign and symptom of a nation’s historical decline.

What Jacob fails to understand (or care about) is that none of those “big issues” are responsibilities of a government within its proper scope.  The fact that the US has deluded itself into thinking otherwise is the real symptom of the historical decline he misdiagnosed.

Weisberg and others contend that racism will play a large role in the election.  Whether they actually believe that, or conveniently commission its use for the root of a variety of tactics, I don’t know.  I’d guess they don’t either, but they have to luxury to play the card from both sides of the deck, so it doesn’t matter.  They can use it both to paint non-leftist whites as unenlightened, mouth-breathing, Fascist cavemen (as some voters certainly are), and as a form of denigration, regardless of legitimacy, to guilt others into not being “one of those guys.”

This double edge sword represents a textbook Argument from Intimidation - “only a racist wouldn’t support Obama.”

While any objective individual will attest, especially one living in the south, that caveman racism is certainly still alive any well - I think the fact that Obama is an avowed Socialist scares off many more whites that does his race.  As Myrhaf wrote

I firmly believe Obama is the least American, most European presidential candidate ever. This little man has no idea what made America great. His vision of America’s ideals is exactly what is destroying American liberty and individual rights.

Indeed he is absolutely against every ideal that brought about the American splendor.  To Obama, accountability is a term only applicable in the pragmatic context of denigrating republicans or big business, justice is only valid in the wretched context of “social justice”, and freedom is a diet-life clobbered by pragmatic, feel-good statism bent on the wholesale violation of individual rights.

Our quality of life is a direct result of individuals who valued personal achievement.  Obama publicly promotes witholding personal achievement and its wretched materialist nature, and that self-esteem is merely a derivation of one’s ability to become a spoke in the collective wheel.

Sure, there are idiots who wouldn’t vote for a person of a different race even if he were the perfect embodiment of their political philosophy, but shouldn’t spitting in the face of reason, rights, and freedom cost B.O. a few votes?

From Paul Hsieh @ Noodlefood

The claim:

Perpetuating the Hollywood/dime fiction image of the cowboy propagates the false belief that Ayn Rand individualism was the historical way and will be the best future way to solve our nation’s problems. Truth is, the sodbusters were the key, the heroes: risking all, sticking determinedly in their forlorn shacks to raise their crops and banding together to raise their barns, build their schools and defend their homes.

The key to our nation’s past successes was Americans joining together in common cause, not individualism. Working together will also be the key to our future.

“Collectivist” Bill

[namecalling mine]

The response:

America was made by great individuals working under a system which (albeit imperfectly) protected their right to use their rational minds to create value and advance their lives. Where would we be without the likes of Thomas Edison, Westinghouse, and Henry Ford? This was a key insight of Ayn Rand and she deserves tremendous credit for promoting a philosophy that celebrates individual achievement — the philosophy that underlies the positive and optimistic “can do” American sense of life.

Of course individuals can and should band together voluntarily when it suits their purposes. I have no problem with “working together” with others for mutual benefit as a voluntary arrangement, as many did in the Old West.

However, this notion is too-often corrupted into a vicious morality which preaches that the collective should take precedence over the individual, that individuals should be coerced to help one other, and that therefore we need massive government intrusions into the economy (such as “universal health care”) to automatically provide for everyone’s needs at taxpayer expense.

This approach will destroy the sorts of individuals who made America great, and will eventually destroy America. We need to celebrate and support the individuals who embody the American spirit and work-ethic, not punish them.

“Individualist” Paul Hsieh

[emphasis and namecalling mine]

This is a textbook rebuttal to the delusion of collectivism.