Jan 9, 2026 | Philosophy
This fact is expressed by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, when he wrote:
“…an amendment was proposed…that…would read ‘A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;’ the insertion was rejected…in proof that they meant to comprehend…the Jew & Gentile, Christian & Mohammedan, Hindoo & Infidel…”
America is a nation of the Enlightenment founded on the philosophy that each individual has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that it is the government’s job to protect these rights.
Jan 9, 2026 | Philosophy
Statists on “warm” – mystical – collectivism:
“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” — ZOHRAN MAMDANI
“The interests of the individual must be subordinated to the interests of the collective.” — MAO
“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” — MUSSOLINI
“The individual is nothing; the collective is everything.” — STALIN
And now from the “frigid” – rational – individualist:
“COLLECTIVISM holds that the INDIVIDUAL has NO RIGHTS, that his life and work belong to the group … and that the group may SACRIFICE him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of BRUTE FORCE—and STATISM has always been the political corollary of collectivism.” — AYN RAND, Virtue of Selfishness
Source, Source
Sep 24, 2024 | Ayn Rand & Objectivism
https://youtu.be/S045vZUWrRg?feature=sharedMay 16, 2024 | Philosophy
“Pride” is the commitment to achieve one’s own moral perfection” according to philosopher Leonard Peikoff in his book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.Invoking Christian mythology, Jordan Peterson recently made this statement against the virtue of pride. Peterson gets pride wrong. In the words of Ayn Rand’s famous character John Galt in her novel Atlas Shrugged:
Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned—that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character—that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind—that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining—that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul—that to live requires a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self-esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the image of Man, the rational being he is born able to create, but must create by choice—that the first precondition of self-esteem is that radiant selfishness of soul which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection, valuing nothing higher than itself—and that the proof of an achieved self-esteem is your soul’s shudder of contempt and rebellion against the role of a sacrificial animal, against the vile impertinence of any creed that proposes to immolate the irreplaceable value which is your consciousness and the incomparable glory which is your existence to the blind evasions and the stagnant decay of others.
The moral amibition of pride is the quest to achieve moral pefection. It is as Aristotle note, the crown of the virtues:“Pride, then, seems to be a sort of crown of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them. Therefore it is hard to be truly proud; for it is impossible without nobility and goodness of character.”
Jul 17, 2023 | Ayn Rand & Objectivism
Ayn Rand Institute’s Elan Journo’s interview with Yeonmi Park at closing banquet for OCON 2023. Journo needs his own TV show, and everyone needs to her book .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTEfjt5ylzs
