In a proper society, the citizens have rights, but the government does not. The government acts by permission, as expressed in a written constitution that limits public officials to defined functions and procedures. In essence, the purpose of a constitution is to protect the individual from two possible tyrants: the government or the mob. “Democracy” […]
A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or associations. […]
Politics rests on ethics; it is an application of ethics to social questions. What type of society conforms to or reflects the principle of morality? This is the question asked by phylosophical politics. Given the Objectivist morality, the question becomes: What type of society conforms to the requirements of man’s life? What type represents the […]
The initiation of force as evil: The virtue of rationality requires one to think, and then to be guided by his conclusions in action. Force clashes with both those requirements. In unleashing a process of force, the brute acts to nullify his victim’s independence – while himself becoming a second-hander, whose concern is the conquest […]
It is only the concept of “life” that makes the concept of “value” possible. Objectivism says that remaining alive is the goal of values and of all proper action. Rationality is the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide to action. Human […]
“Value” presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible. One does not observe desks or pebbles pursuing goals; one does observe men, […]
On the physical level, the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex, are actions generated by the organism itself and directed to a single goal: the maintenance of the organism’s life. Most living entities have no power of choice. This kind of organism functions only as its nature requires, without […]