Equality Through Education

I posted a slightly different version of this on the OKObjectivists list on Dec 5th -

I got another email today from a Gay activist who's depressed by the elections and wants to do something about it. Education is the answer, they say. Well, okay, but education about what? This particular activist says we need more positive portrayals of Gay people. Well, I think that's a start but is it really the key?

What is required to truly secure the right to be Gay? I think this would require an understanding of what it would take implement such a thing in the context of an individual human being's right to his own life. Clearly that has to come first, for what use is the right to be Gay if one does not have a right to one's own life?

And there is the problem. In "Man's Rights" Ayn Rand wrote, "The concept of individual rights is so new that most men have not grasped it fully to this day." Under the influence of altruism, most people don't know that property rights are the means by which individual rights are implemented. (I think there are some altruists who do know this and are actively working to prevent others from knowing it.)

As Rand states, "The concept of a "right" pertains only to action - specifically, to freedom of action." This is because sustaining one's life requires action. Since life requires effort, living is acting. The right to property is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of something. I think it's important to note here that keeping something is not a passive state, it requires work - effort - action. This is how the right to property is at the base of all other rights. The right to act and to choose your actions is the right to be yourself.

Obviously, this is incompatible with altruism, which demands that you deny yourself and make others the object of your actions. This is the crossroads at which America now stands: America is a country built by individualism which pays lip service to altruism. Both the religious right and the liberal left want to push it all the way into altruism and the dictatorship to which it leads.

I have learned from my own first-hand experience that Ayn Rand was correct when she said that politics is an effect, not a cause. This is what Americans need to be educated about. Teach them the truth about altruism and individualism, and the politics will take care of itself.