What is Barack Obama’s vision for America? Here’s one telling clue. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the president declares that the individualist credo of novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand misses “what’s best in America.”
Really?
Rand, who immigrated to America from Soviet Russia when
she was 21, praised this country as “the greatest, the noblest and, in
its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.”
America’s greatness, in Rand’s judgment, lay in the fact that it was
the first nation in history to treat government as the individual’s
servant rather than his master. As she put it, “All previous systems had
held that man’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of
him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by
favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man’s life is his by right
. . . that a right is the property of an individual, that society as
such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is
the protection of individual rights.”
In America, the government’s only job was to protect the individual’s
right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness from
violation by physical force or fraud. In this atmosphere of freedom,
individuals flourished. From the founding through the beginning of the
twentieth century, government kept Americans free to create, innovate,
and compete, to keep the results if they succeeded, and to try again if
they failed.
It was during this era that immigrants flocked here by the millions
and America became known as “the land of opportunity”—not the land of
handouts (there was no welfare state in America during this time) or of
guaranteed success, but of freedom to make your own way without
obstruction. Today the supporters of Big Government are fond of telling
us that “a hungry man is not free.” Those who immigrated to America
during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries knew otherwise. They
arrived poor—even famished—but ambitious.
The results are a matter of historical record. Untold numbers went
from rags to riches, while the great majority of individuals were able
to live better than their parents and grandparents had. Average wages
for workers, for instance, more than tripled during the nineteenth
century while working hours declined by nearly a third.
Obama mocks this as a society where “you’re on your own.” But
Americans during this era were not “on their own” in the lone-wolf,
asocial sense he insinuates. Free Americans developed complex webs of
association based on voluntary agreement. As Tocqueville famously
observed at the time, “Americans of all ages, all stations of life and
all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not
only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but
others of a thousand types.” There were businesses, charities, social
clubs, private insurance agencies to protect against disease and injury,
and a whole lot more. By limiting government, Americans unleashed
voluntary association.
In a sense, however, Americans were “on their own.” Limited
government meant that other people’s wants and needs were not your
unchosen responsibility. The corollary was that you and you alone were
responsible for securing your own wants and needs. You were responsible
for developing the knowledge, skills, and traits of character you needed
to earn a living. You were responsible for saving to meet life’s
unexpected twists and turns. You were responsible for educating your
children. You could ask for help from other people during hard times—but
you could not demand it as a right. You were on your own.
That was not a bug but a feature: it meant that the bad choices of
your neighbor didn’t constitute a claim on your time and wealth: you
could go right ahead and focus on making something of your life, rather
than be dragged down in the muck of his.
This is the America that Rand upheld and fought for. But Obama thinks
this is not “what’s best in America.” Then what is? Basically, it’s
everything that’s not distinctively American: entitlement
schemes, rampant economic controls and regulations, and government
infrastructure projects copied from other countries. For Obama, caring
about others doesn’t mean respecting their freedom or helping them
voluntarily when they hit tough times—it means enacting collectivist
policies that restrict economic freedom and redistribute earned wealth.
In short, what’s best in America according to Obama is everything that came after the era when government’s power was limited by the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
That, not Rand’s individualism, is what’s truly un-American.
www.forbes.com
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