Transcript for Ayn Rand Message to GOP Candidates

In recent years, the conservatives have gradually come to a dim realization

of the weakness in their position,

of the philisophical flaws that had to be corrected,

but the means by which they are attempting to correct it

are worse than the original weakness.

There are three inter-related arguments used by today's

consevatives to justify capitalism, which can be best designated

as the argument from faith, the argument from tradition,

the argument from depravity. Since they needed a moral base many

conservatives decided to choose religion as their moral justification.

They are claiming that freedom, capitalism, and America,

are based on faith and god.

Politically such a claim contradicts the fundamental principles

of the United States.

In America religion is a private matter,

and must not be brought into political issues.

Intellectually to rest ones case on faith is to concede

that reason is on the side of one's enemies,

to concede that there are no rational arguments

to support the ideas which created this country.

No rational justification for freedom, justice, property, individual rights,

and they can be accepted only on faith.

Consider the implications of that attempt.

While the communists are claiming

that they are the champions of reason and science,

the conservatives concede it and retreat into the realm

of mysticism, into another world, surrendering this world to communism.

It is the kind of victories that the communist irrational ideology

could never have won on it's own merits.

Now consider a second argument.

The attempt to justify capitalism on the ground of tradition.

Some people declare that to be a conservative,

means to uphold the status quo, the given, the established,

regardless of what it might be, regardless of whether it is good or bad,

right or wrong, defensible or indefensible.

They declare that we must defend the American political system,

not because it is right, but because our ancestors choose it.

Not because it is good, but because it is old.

America was created by men who broke with all political traditions,

and originated a system unprecedented in history.

Relying on nothing but the unaided power of their own intellect.

But those Neo-Conservatives are now trying to tell us that America,

was the product of faith in revealed truth,

and of uncritical respect for the traditions of the past.

It is certainly irrational to use "the new" as a standard of value.

To believe that an idea or a policy is good merely because it is new.

But it is much more preposteriously irrational to use

the old as a standard of value.

To claim that an idea or a policy is good merely because it is ancient.

The liberals are constantly asserting that they present the future,

that they are new, progressive, forward looking...etc.

And they denouce the conservatives as old fashioned

representatives of a dead past.

The conservatives concede it, and thus help the liberals to propagate

one of today's most grotesque contradictions.

Collectivism and dictatorship; the frozen status society,

is offered to us in the name of progress,

while capitalism the only free, dynamic, creative society ever devised,

is defended in the name of pacifity, and stagnation.

The plea to preserve tradition as such

appeals to the worst elements in men, and rejects the best.

It appeals to fear, cowardice, conformity, self-doubt,

and rejects creativness, originality, independence, self-reliance.

It is an outrageous plea to address to human beings anywhere,

but the more outrageous here in America.

The country based on the principle that man must stand on his own feet,

live by his own judgement, and move constantly foward

as a productive, creative, innovator.