Supporters of campaign finance laws have been apoplectic since the Supreme Court struck down a ban on corporate political ads in Citizens United. Having lost another big case this year in McCutcheon v. FEC, they now want to write their views directly into the Constitution.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment that would let government limit contributions to candidates and spending by and on behalf of them. The House will take up a similar proposal soon. To see where this amendment would lead if enacted, consider that the law in Citizens United prevented a group from distributing a film that criticized Hillary Clinton during her last presidential bid. During arguments in the case, the government’s lawyer admitted that the law could apply to books as well.

At the core of this effort is the very dangerous view that freedom of speech isn’t an inalienable individual right — a right to say what you want regardless of what others think — but a privilege that we exercise at the sufferance of “the public.”

This is the prevailing view among many intellectuals and politicians today. Justice Breyer expressed it in dissent in McCutcheon joined by his three colleagues on the left. In his view, the First Amendment protects the “public’s interest” in having its “collective speech matter.” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT, echoed this view when he complained in advance of a hearing on the proposed amendment that the Court is ignoring “the voices of all Americans” in order to “amplify the voices of billionaires and corporations.”

This is a fashionable view — we need campaign finance laws to prevent rich and powerful “special interests” from drowning out the “the public.” But being fashionable doesn’t make it true.

After all, who is this “public” that allegedly isn’t being heard? Does it include newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal? Broadcasters like MSNBC and Fox News? Millions of bloggers and Facebook and Twitter users? Donors to hundreds of political and advocacy groups? Jaw-boning politicians?

The fact is, “the public” doesn’t exist. Only individuals do. Terms like “the public” are never used to refer, literally, to every last person who lives in society. Instead, they are always used to justify one group of people using the force of law against others.

Consider how easy it is to define “the public” to mean groups whose ideas you favor. To Harry Reid and his allies, “the public” doesn’t include the Koch brothers or Tea Party groups targeted by the IRS, but it does include unions, environmental groups and others who support unlimited government power.

Of course, the right sometimes does the same thing. But that’s part of the point. The “public interest” can be used to justify any restriction on speech. No one ever admits that they want to silence others, so they invoke this magic concept to do that dirty work for them.

And make no mistake: silencing people is the point of campaign finance laws. Yale law professor Owen Fiss defended those laws in his 1996 book, The Irony of Free Speech, by saying that government may “have to silence the voices of some in order to hear the voices of others. Sometimes there is simply no other way.”

Silencing the loudest voices is the only way to make sure “the public” gets heard over individuals. And it’s always where campaign finance laws lead, because people easily find ways around them. Limit contributions to candidates, and people will spend money on their own ads. Prevent people from saying “vote for” or “vote against” and they will criticize candidates in other ways. That’s why, in 2002, Congress passed McCain-Feingold, which banned groups from even mentioning candidates near an election. No restrictions on spending for speech can be successful unless all spending is restricted.

The solution to this creeping censorship is to defend free speech as a right, not a privilege. That right does not protect our “voices” or guarantee that we’ll have “influence.” It protects our freedom to speak. Whether we are loud enough, persistent enough, or articulate enough is up to us.

Amending the Constitution is a long shot, and today’s effort will almost definitely fail. But tomorrow’s may not. If you value free speech, now would be a good time to start making yourself heard.

About The Author

Steve Simpson

Former Director of Legal Studies (2013-2018), Ayn Rand Institute

Even as a proposed truce fails, and Israel’s military is set to “intensify” retaliation against the barrage of Hamas rockets, the admonitions have started. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed “serious doubt” that Israel’s military strikes comply with international norms of war. But it is the laws of war themselves that must be questioned.

The international laws of war are widely esteemed as necessary to civilize warfare by limiting the humanitarian impact of armed conflict. They mandate, for example, the avoidance of harm to noncombatants and the “proportional” use of retaliatory force.

We can all agree that civilian casualties are an unwelcome fact of war, but these laws are rigged against Israel in this conflict — rigged against any free nation acting in self-defense. The more scrupulously Israel complies with these norms, the more it abets Hamas and undercuts its self-defense.

Morally, in defending itself, Israel’s priority must be eliminating the threat from Hamas. Hamas has declared its goal of destroying Israel in no uncertain terms. It is responsible for devastating suicide bombings and, over the years, thousands of rocket attacks from Gaza against towns and cities in Israel. Yet, against this backdrop, the laws of war enjoin Israel to practice restraint and to subordinate the objective of self-defense in the name of safeguarding civilians in a war zone.

Embracing the laws of war, the Israeli military dutifully goes far out of its way to warn of impending strikes. It drops thousands of leaflets in Arabic warning Gazans to avoid certain areas that may be targeted. It calls and texts people living in buildings where a rocket is about to hit, giving them time to evacuate. Often it fires “a knock on the roof” warning rocket, before leveling the building. It has aborted missions if civilians are spotted nearby the target.

For Hamas and allied Islamists, these Israeli measures are a tactical gift. For example, during the 2008–9 Gaza war, Hamas deliberately stashed weapons and ammunition, including Grad missiles, in private homes. And it continues to do that and to situate rocket launchers in densely populated areas. Last week, in an interview on Al-Aqsa TV, a Hamas spokesman called on Palestinians to climb to their roofs to serve as human shields against Israeli bombardment (which some Palestinians eagerly do). When a rocket lands, Hamas and its allies can stand next to corpses of its accomplices, portray them as civilians, and scream about Israeli “war crimes.”

By any rational standard, the aggressor in war is culpable for the death or injury of civilians on both sides. But the laws of war effectively push the blame from Hamas to Israel.

Or, take another principle in the laws of war: that retaliatory military force be “proportional” to the attack. Sounds sensible in the abstract, right? But it stands at odds with a free nation’s moral obligation to defend its citizens’ lives. In the name of proportionality, should Israel’s military be limited to using the same primitive, often imprecise, mortars that Hamas fires from Gaza, and nothing more? (Or: should American retaliation against Pearl Harbor have been confined to bombing precisely the same number and size Japanese warships?) The sheer fact of Israel’s military superiority casts any step it takes as presumptively disproportionate.

Compliance with the laws of war means Israel has to soften its blows, even pull its punches — and thereby, enable Hamas to continue imperiling Israeli lives.

It is a bitter but inevitable truth that, as the scholar
Peter Berkowitz has noted, the armies of Israel and the United States “devote untold and unprecedented hours to studying and enforcing the laws of war,” yet they are the most vociferously attacked for supposed violations of these norms.

Witness the UN’s notoriously tendentious Goldstone Report on the 2008–9 Gaza conflict, which lapped up Hamas allegations at face value and presumed Israel’s guilt (the lead author, Judge Richard Goldstone, later backtracked from the report). If the past is prologue, expect a replay. Following Operation Protective Edge, legions of laws-of-war enforcers at NGOs and the UN will doubtless vilify Israel (yet again) for “war crimes,” while downplaying and turning a blind eye to the heinous tactics and goal of Hamas and its allies. Already Amnesty International has demanded a UN investigation of violations of international law.

The laws of war favor the terrorist aggressors and subvert the state fighting them. None of that should surprise us, because there’s an insoluble conflict between these laws and a free nation’s moral right to self-defense. Effective self-defense means using the force necessary to defeat an aggressor. But adhering to the laws of war means a nation like Israel must fight with its own hands tied. The inevitable result? More deadly Islamist attacks on Israel.

There are of course crucial moral issues in the conduct of war. But none can be answered properly, unless we start by accepting the principle that it is the paramount responsibility of Jerusalem (and every free nation) to safeguard the lives and freedom of its citizens.

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President of Content Products, Ayn Rand Institute

“I can say,” wrote Ayn Rand, “not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and esthetic roots — that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.”

Rand’s bold claim was based on the political philosophy contained in the Declaration of Independence — contained explicitly, in Jefferson’s immortal statement that government’s sole purpose is to protect the individual’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — and contained implicitly, in moral principles of rational self-interest that Rand herself made explicit almost two hundred years later.

“It is in this context — from the perspective of the bloody millennia of mankind’s history — that I want you to look at the birth of a miracle: the United States of America,” Rand wrote elsewhere. “If it is ever proper for men to kneel, we should kneel when we read the Declaration of Independence.”

On July 4, we commemorate political independence from England and pay tribute to the Founders’ moral vision of the sovereign individual who deserves freedom to live by his own independent judgment. But to achieve that ideal in the twenty-first century, we desperately need Ayn Rand’s perspective on individual rights and how government can protect them. Here are some resources for those who want to explore the deeper significance of Independence Day:

Ayn Rand on “America” (from The Ayn Rand Lexicon)

Ayn Rand on the “Founding Fathers” (from The Ayn Rand Lexicon)

Ayn Rand on “Man’s Rights” and “The Nature of Government” (essays available here)

“Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence” (essay by Onkar Ghate)

“The Meaning of Independence Day” (video by Mike Berliner)

Boston Tea Party – July 4 keynote (by Yaron Brook)

“Atlas Shrugged: A Paean to American Liberty” (op-ed by Don Watkins)

“Kagan’s Updated Declaration of Independence” (blog post by Tom Bowden)

About The Author

Tom Bowden

Analyst and Outreach Liaison, Ayn Rand Institute

You know your critics are desperate when they accuse you of hypocrisy without bothering to investigate your stated principles. The desperation is especially palpable if you’ve explained how those principles apply to the very action you’re being criticized for.

So it is with Ayn Rand and Social Security.

When fans voice her moral critique of the welfare state, many opponents respond by attacking her. She collected Social Security, they say, even though she opposed the program’s very existence. What a hypocrite! But what a gift, because she’s shown that her philosophy is unlivable. Case closed.

If only real thinking were this easy.

From the archival evidence I’ve seen, Rand did collect Social Security. But isn’t it relevant that Rand argued in print for the consistency of this position, a fact any informed critic should know? We might end up disagreeing with Rand’s analysis, but doesn’t plain decency require that we first examine it? So let’s do that.

Rand morally opposes the welfare state because she’s an unwavering advocate of the individual’s moral right to his life, his liberty, his earned property, and the pursuit of his own happiness. She viewed America as putting an end to the idea that the individual must live for king, neighbor or pope. For the first time in history the individual was declared free to live for himself. It was not handouts or entitlement programs that the millions of individuals who came to America’s shores sought, but freedom. The freedom to rise as high as their minds, abilities and hard work would take them.

Rand argues that a country dedicated to individualism must oppose every “redistribution” of wealth for a simple but profound reason: it’s not our wealth to redistribute. If I walk into your garage and drive your Camry across the street to your neighbor’s garage, I haven’t redistributed our “collective” wealth, I’ve stolen yours. If I help pass a law that allows the government to “redistribute” your Camry to your neighbor, I’ve only made the situation worse by legalizing the theft.

Yet this is what programs like Social Security do. In essence, Social Security seizes the money of a young worker and gives it to an older person to pay for his retirement. This is combined with the grisly hope, falsely labeled a promise, that when this young victim reaches retirement age, there will be enough new young workers earning enough money for the government to now victimize them to pay for his retirement.

What’s moral about this? If you and I wrote a computer program to siphon a few percent from young people’s bank accounts and deposit the proceeds into the accounts of the elderly, we would be branded criminals. What makes it moral if the government does it? The fact that a lot of us voted for it? Should we say the same about Prohibition or segregation laws?

Of course, proponents of Social Security will cite eighty-year-old ladies who, through misfortune, were unable to save enough for retirement and now live off of Social Security. Conveniently unmentioned and unseen are the young victims, whose earnings were seized: the young man who can’t afford both to work and go to college, the young couple unable to put aside money for a down payment on a house, the young woman unable to save enough to start her own business.

Rand rejects the collectivist notion behind all these “redistribution” schemes: that individuals are the chess pieces of bureaucrats, who get to decide which pawns will be sacrificed and to whom. In America, each person must earn his own way. The pursuit of happiness does not guarantee you success. Those who fail, perhaps through no fault of their own, like the eighty-year-old lady, are free to seek the help of others. But there is no place for the idea, as Rand puts it, that “the misfortune of some is a mortgage on others.”

This is why Rand opposes every “redistribution” scheme of the welfare state.

Precisely because Rand views welfare programs like Social Security as legalized plunder, she thinks the only condition under which it is moral to collect Social Security is if one “regards it as restitution and opposes all forms of welfare statism” (emphasis hers). The seeming contradiction that only the opponent of Social Security has the moral right to collect it dissolves, she argues, once you recognize the crucial difference between the voluntary and the coerced.

Social Security is not voluntary. Your participation is forced through payroll taxes, with no choice to opt out even if you think the program harmful to your interests. If you consider such forced “participation” unjust, as Rand does, the harm inflicted on you would only be compounded if your announcement of the program’s injustice precludes you from collecting Social Security.

This being said, your moral integrity does require that you view the funds only as (partial) restitution for all that has been taken from you by such welfare schemes and that you continue, sincerely, to oppose the welfare state.

In contrast, the advocate of Social Security on Rand’s view is not the victim but the supporter of legalized plunder, whether he realizes it or not. This fact morally disqualifies him from accepting the spoils “redistributed” by the welfare state.

Rand’s position on the welfare state is no doubt controversial. But for critics to dismiss it as hypocrisy is a confession of ignorance or worse.

Unfortunately, there exists a long history of Rand’s opponents distorting her positions to attack straw men. With Rand now so prominent in our national debate, let’s try to raise the level of conversation and discuss her actual arguments.

About The Author

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

In 1976, the Wall Street Journal criticized the Supreme Court for creating a “half-dead monster” out of the campaign finance laws in a seminal case called Buckley v. Valeo. The Court recognized that limiting the amount of money someone can spend to get a candidate elected necessarily limits the amount of speech they can produce, so it struck down spending limits under the First Amendment. But it split the baby, upholding limits on contributions to candidates as an allegedly minimal intrusion on First Amendment rights.

As the Wall Street Journal had predicted, the campaign finance monster continued to stalk political speech for decades to come. In 2003, the Supreme Court upheld McCain-Feingold, which prevented many groups from even mentioning a candidate near an election.

In recent years, the five conservative Justices on the Court seem to be awakening to the threat these laws pose to First Amendment rights. In Citizens United, the Court struck down a ban on political spending by corporations and unions. In this year’s McCutcheon v. FEC, the Court invalidated a limit on the aggregate amount individuals can give to all politicians. The First Amendment, under the majority’s view in these cases, protects our right to think for ourselves. Some may want to spend their own money on their own speech, others may want to work with advocacy groups, still others may want to support one or more candidates directly. In all events, the decision is theirs to make, not the government’s.

Unfortunately, these cases have only wounded campaign finance laws, and now a number of groups are trying to keep them alive by amending the Constitution. The latest proposal, authored by Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), was taken up by the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. Udall’s proposal would let Congress and the states limit contributions to candidates and spending by and on behalf of them. To see where this would lead, consider that the law at issue in Citizens United prevented an advocacy group from distributing a film that criticized Hillary Clinton while she was running for president. During oral arguments in the case, the government’s lawyer admitted that the logic of the law would apply to books as well.

Amending the Constitution is a long shot, and this effort will almost definitely fail. But the Supreme Court’s five conservative justices won’t be around forever, and the many people who despise the Court’s recent cases defending political speech are not going to give up. If we really want to kill off the campaign finance monster, we need to drive a stake through the wrong-headed view of free speech at its heart. This view holds freedom of speech not as an inalienable individual right — a right to say what you wish regardless of what others think — but as a kind of privilege that we exercise at the sufferance of “the public,” “society,” or “the people.”

This is the prevailing view among many intellectuals and politicians today. Justice Breyer embraced it in his dissent in the McCutcheon case, joined by his three colleagues on the left. According to Breyer, the First Amendment doesn’t just protect individuals, it also protects the “public’s interest” in having its “collective speech” matter. “Where enough money calls the tune,” according to Justice Breyer, “the general public will not be heard.” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, echoed this view in his statement announcing this week’s hearing: “The Court has repeatedly used the First Amendment — not to protect the voices of all Americans, but as an instrument to amplify the voices of billionaires and corporations.”

This is a fashionable view these days — rich and powerful “special interests” are drowning out the voice of “the public,” so we need campaign finance laws to prevent them from speaking too loudly. But being fashionable doesn’t make the idea sensible or true.

After all, who is this “public” that allegedly isn’t being heard? Does it include those who run and write for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and hundreds of other publications? Broadcasters at MSNBC and Fox News? The thousands of bloggers and millions of Facebook and Twitter users who express themselves every day? Donors to politicians and advocacy groups from all political persuasions? Jaw-boning politicians? Voters? Is the problem that none of these people are being heard or that too many of them are? It’s hard to tell, since “the public” is such a fuzzy term.

The fact is, there’s no such thing as “the public.” “The people,” as an entity, doesn’t exist. Only individuals do. And unless terms like these are used to refer, literally, to every last person who lives in society — which they never are — they end up being used to refer to one group of people who supposedly has the right to use the force of law against the others.

Consider how easy it is to define “the public” as consistent with your ideological agenda. According to Harry Reid and his allies, “the public” doesn’t include the Koch brothers, whom they have attacked repeatedly as “un-American” plutocrats whose “shadowy” network of groups is trying to undermine government as we know it. Nor does it include the Tea Party groups that the IRS targeted in its investigations of nonprofits. But, in the left’s view, “the public” does include unions, environmental groups, and pretty much anyone else who supports more regulation, higher taxes, and more entitlements.

This isn’t to say that the right never plays this game as well. Republicans have certainly supported some campaign finance laws, typically to go after unions. And they invoke the “public interest” often in other areas. But that’s part of the point. The fuzzy notion of the “public interest” can be invoked to justify any restriction on speech. No one ever admits that they really want to silence people with whom they disagree, so they invoke the magic concept of “the public” to do that dirty work for them.

And make no mistake: shutting people up is the point of the campaign finance laws. Yale law professor Owen Fiss summed up the idea succinctly in his 1996 book The Irony of Free Speech. According to Fiss, the government may “have to silence the voices of some in order to hear the voices of others. Sometimes there is simply no other way.” Silencing the loudest voices is the only way to accomplish the goal of making sure “the public” gets heard over individuals.

The inevitable result of campaign finance laws is to restrict any form of speech about politics, because when faced with one restriction, people will find other ways to speak out. Limit direct contributions to candidates, and people will spend money on their own independent ads. Prevent people from saying “vote for” or “vote against” and they will criticize candidates without relying on such “express advocacy.” That’s why the “half-dead monster” the Supreme Court created in Buckley led to McCain-Feingold’s ban on even mentioning candidates. No restrictions on spending for speech can be successful unless all spending is restricted.

We can’t rely on the Supreme Court to prevent this creeping censorship forever. The solution has to come from a popular defense of free speech as a right, not a privilege. That right does not protect our “voices”; it doesn’t guarantee that we will be heard or will have as much “influence” as others. It protects our freedom to speak. Whether we are loud enough, persistent enough, or articulate enough is up to us. Fortunately, in today’s world there are many ways to amplify your voice.

Today’s effort to amend the Constitution will almost definitely fail. But tomorrow’s may not. If you value the right to speak your mind and to try to convince others to change theirs — which is the very heart of a free society — now would be a good time to start making yourself heard.

About The Author

Steve Simpson

Former Director of Legal Studies (2013-2018), Ayn Rand Institute

What can diplomatic engagement with so-called rogue regimes achieve? According to the established view, even fruitless talks allow diplomats to learn about an adversary, which can, in turn, yield useful results. But the evidence, cogently laid out by Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, tells another, and disastrous, story. Rubin exposes such received wisdom as complacently wrongheaded, presenting multiple case studies involving (among others) Libya under Qaddafi, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Iran, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and North Korea.

Engaging rogues, Rubin demonstrates, harms U.S. interests by granting undeserved legitimacy and, in many cases, financial payouts to hostile regimes and groups. The Islamic Republic of Iran epitomizes this problem: Decades of diplomatic overtures have emboldened this sponsor of terrorism and would-be nuclear power.

Throughout, Rubin questions key assumptions underpinning such diplomacy: Does an adversary’s willingness to talk evince a willingness to reach a negotiated settlement or rather a desire to pocket bribes and concessions? Does the tactic of trying to mire an adversary in endless diplomatic maneuverings really nudge tyrants toward becoming peace-loving statesmen?

Rubin’s case studies are replete with officials downplaying, whitewashing, and evading their adversaries’ flagrant duplicity and brutality. Western officials across the political spectrum recoil from acknowledging that certain regimes seek goals beyond the bounds of morality. They do so at their peril, warns Rubin: “When U.S. presidents embrace diplomacy and incentives as the solution to rogue behavior—when hope trumps change—the United States does not win peace, but hastens conflict.”

Rubin’s argument is compelling, though additional discussion of Nixon’s diplomacy with China and Reagan’s with the USSR would have bolstered it. The author leaves open the possibility (with qualifications) of successfully engaging certain rogues while correctly suggesting that some regimes are beyond the pale. The book brilliantly underscores the urgency of grappling with, rather than skirting, the difficult issue of assessing a regime’s character.

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President of Content Products, Ayn Rand Institute

Well, we’ve rolled up on another Earth Day. This Earth Day as on every Earth Day, we are asked to “give one day back to the Earth,” to take one day to “do what’s right” for the Earth (even though according to Earth Day champions, we should be doing these things every day). We are asked to reflect on how mankind is harming the Earth and, if we can’t atone for the “sins” of technology and industry, at least we can take a day to feel guilty about it. It is a day that we are asked to set aside “self-indulgences,” such as toasters, ovens, dishwashers, thermoses, electric light bulbs, plastic bags and bottles, furnaces and cars and instead “think green.”

Back in 1970, just months after the first Earth Day, Ayn Rand spoke about each of these time-saving (and therefore life-saving) items and asked her audience to seriously consider what it would mean to live without them. In that speech, The Anti-Industrial Revolution, Rand begins by painting a vivid picture of what everyday life would look like without the appliances, cheap energy and transportation that the environmentalist movement aims to have us renounce. More than forty Earth Days later, her insights into what was then called the “ecology” movement are just as illuminating about today’s environmentalist movement.

She says that if we understood and took seriously the aims of the ecology movement, we would “scream in protest.” Why does she say that? Because she recognized that environmentalists are not motivated by love for mankind, but by hatred for technology and ultimately for individual freedom.

Don’t believe it? Consider the hundreds of actions environmentalists call on us to take on Earth Day. We are asked to shut off the lights, to switch off our power-consuming computer and phones or to live a day “without using resources.” We are asked to bike or walk to work (no matter the distance), eat no meat, forgo a plastic bag or bottle or make one of the billions of other small sacrifices to the Earth. We are told that cutting back, reducing our energy consumption, and using fewer chemicals are all moral actions.

But Rand recognized that it is precisely these things that keep men safe, healthy and happy. It’s the electric lights that allow us to study at night, the heating and air conditioning that allow us to comfortably bear bitter winter nights and sweltering summer days. It’s the chemical insecticides that keep us safe from malarial mosquitoes, the plastic that keeps food sanitary, the asphalt roads and fossil-fuel-burning vehicles that allow us to escape when nature serves up an earthquake or a hurricane. It is these things that environmentalists scoff at as wasteful luxuries that people should give up. It is these things (and the freedom that make them possible) that environmentalists seek to ban, limit or cut back.

“Make no mistake about it,” Rand says, “it is technology and progress that the nature-lovers are out to destroy.”

Yet people don’t protest. Why?

One reason Rand believes we don’t is that people “take technology — and its magnificent contributions to your life — for granted . . . .” I think this is exactly what environmentalist leaders and politicians, such as Al Gore, count on when they push through laws to limit energy technology and the fossil fuels that power it. In a blog post last year, Al Gore Claims there is No Such Thing as Ethical Oil, I took time to pause and reflect on the value that oil brings into my life. You can bet that this Earth Day, I’ll be reflecting once again on the incredible wealth that technology makes possible.

Another reason Rand thinks people don’t protest when environmentalists tell us to renounce our way of life, is that “[y]ou are unable to believe that some people can advocate man’s destruction for the sake of man’s destruction — and when you hear them, you think that they don’t mean it. But they do.” In No “Footprint,” No Life, Keith Lockitch examines the idea of an “environmental footprint” and concludes: “The only way to leave no ‘footprint’ would be to die — a conclusion that is not lost on many green ideologues.”

Finally, Rand gives insight into the tools that the ecology movement uses to accomplish their campaign: fear and guilt.

In Are Americans Burned Out from Green Guilt Mongering?, Keith Lockitch cites a recent Gallup poll that ranks climate change and environmental issues near the bottom of the list of things Americans are concerned about. In light of that poll, he wonders if Americans are fed up with “[t]he constant refrain from the environmentalist movement . . . that our affluent lifestyle is destroying the planet, and nothing we do to change it is ever enough.”

On the issue of fear, I see activists creating a campaign of fear to try to beat down the technology of genetic engineering. Biotech foods are falsely blamed for a slew of diseases. Activists resort to “vague, scary-sounding pronouncements” and even boots and masks to make people afraid to eat these foods, and farmers afraid to plant them. In GMO Stands for God Move Over? I explain why this particular anti-biotechnology phrase is “[m]ore than just a slogan, it is an attack, aimed at your mind. It says not only should we leave nature alone, but that we should kneel low in fear of it.”

Fear and guilt are exactly what we should shrug off this Earth Day. As Keith Lockitch has said before, “we should have a Be Proud of Being Human Day . . . not a Feel Guilty for Trampling on Mother Earth Day.”

So, this Earth Day, sit down and listen to The Anti-Industrial Revolution, and take Ayn Rand’s advice in that speech to “give a silent ‘Thank you’ to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find.” Salute your toaster. Cherish a disposable plastic bag. Savor a biotech food. And for crying out loud, keep the lights on.

Finally, for a little humor to keep us from getting too gloomy on Earth Day, you need to check out Keith Lockitch’s latest editorial on what some environmentalists are calling “the most ethical meat.” Try and guess what it is.

About The Author

Amanda Maxham

Former junior fellow and later a research associate (2012-2018), Ayn Rand Institute

The left is screaming that inequalities of wealth and income are on the rise, while the right responds that the rise isn’t so dramatic, and besides there are ways to lessen it. But ARI’s Yaron Brook has been speaking out lately on the theme of economic inequality, offering a point of view that departs from the mainstream.

In our view, the right place to begin is asking: Why is such inequality even an issue? Why should we care? Check out these links for answers:

Turning the Tables on the Inequality Alarmists — Essay by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Is Inequality Fair? — Public talk by Yaron Brook at ARI’s headquarters in, Irvine, California, March 5, 2014.

Inequality: Should We Care? — Public debate (Yaron Brook vs. James Galbraith) at University of Texas at Austin, April 17, 2014.

To Be Born Poor Doesn’t Mean You’ll Always Be Poor — Article by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Yaron Answers: Should we promote equality of opportunity? — Video by Yaron Brook.

The Real Reason J.K. Rowling Deserves Her Billions — Blog post by Don Watkins

Ayn Rand Lexicon:

Egalitarianism

Despite two years of courting by the United Auto Workers union, Volkswagen employees in Chattanooga, Tennessee, recently rejected UAW representation in a 712 to 626 vote. This is a major blow to organized labor, whose numbers are dwindling. “When you see what the UAW did in Detroit, you have to worry about what it will do here,” says Mike Burton, a leader among VW workers who opposed the union.

Burton’s distrust of the UAW reflects the broader history of union antagonism toward businesses. Unions are infamous for bogging down businesses with counterproductive work rules, damaging industries with frequent strikes, instilling an “us versus them” attitude among employees, and strong-arming employers into giving more and more raises and benefits regardless of the long-term consequences to the company.

Why can unions get away with such hostility?

Unions per se are not the problem, but it is a problem that labor laws grant unions coercive powers they wouldn’t otherwise have. If labor relations were completely voluntary, then business leaders would not be forced to submit to unreasonable demands from unions, and business leaders and employees would be protected from union interference and harassment if they choose to work in a nonunionized environment.

Today, however, the government does not protect employers from such things. Instead, it forces employers to deal with unions through the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 — also known as the Wagner Act. This law forces business leaders to recognize a union as an exclusive bargaining agent if the union gets enough votes, forbids them from disassociating with any union, and legally requires them to negotiate with such unions “in good faith,” as determined by National Labor Relations Board judges.

In practice, the Wagner Act allows unions to make unreasonable demands, and forces business leaders to choose between caving in to some of these demands and facing costly and time-consuming litigation. Hence, the United Steel Workers can strong-arm steelmakers into accepting work rules that require several men to complete tasks that could easily be done by one. The UAW can pressure Chrysler into reinstating employees who were fired for drinking alcohol and smoking pot on the job. The International Longshoremen’s Association — a union of dockworkers — can get away with threatening to shut down ports across the East Coast if shippers ceased paying “container royalties,” which are essentially bribes paid to union workers since the 1960s in exchange for not fighting the introduction of shipping containers. The Bakers’ Union can refuse to work out a mutually agreeable solution with Hostess, despite the dire realities of the company’s financial situation, and instead push the whole company to liquidate. For many businesses, having a union means being trapped in a relationship with a partner who can be utterly shameless about seeing how much they can get away with at your expense.

And unions wield their government-granted coercive power against employees. They can force all employees to pay union dues, even the ones who strongly object to the union’s goals, policies, and attitude. The International Association of Machinists — a union representing Boeing employees in Washington State — can try to legally forbid Boeing from giving manufacturing jobs to nonunion workers in South Carolina, by agitating for an NLRB lawsuit. The United Food and Commercial Workers can force the supermarket Giant Eagle to rescind pay raises it gave to outstanding employees, demanding they be compensated the same as those who don’t go the extra mile.

In a world in which labor relationships were completely voluntary, unions would have to work with employers if they want to be welcome in a factory, and they would have to offer values to employees if they need to retain members. But today, because the government forces businesses to deal with them, unions can get away with antagonizing employers and employees.

The rejection of the UAW in Chattanooga should prompt us to recognize how coercive labor laws can allow a union to poison relationships between business and labor.

About The Author

Doug Altner

Doug Altner was an analyst and instructor at the Ayn Rand Institute between 2011 and 2014.

Thanks to America’s old-age welfare programs, Social Security and Medicare, millions of young Americans are being drafted into debt. Like the military draft, the Debt Draft treats the lives of young people as the property of the state. They have been conscripted to finance other people’s retirement and health care needs, regardless of what impact this will have on their own lives. They’re told that their duty is to set aside their own happiness in order to serve the needs of the old.

What can you do to fight the Debt Draft? Help wage a moral crusade against the ideas that have led to it. The welfare state cannot exist without the consent of its victims. It counts on the people being exploited to accept that they are being sacrificed for a noble cause. If the victims ever rebelled publicly and said they do not consent to being victimized — that the Debt Draft is immoral — then the scheme would collapse.

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About The Author

Don Watkins

Former Fellow (2006-2017), Ayn Rand Institute