Protesters Are Enemies of Freedom

When the Democratic National Convention meets in Los Angeles next week, it will be besieged by hordes of protesters representing about 70 different groups. These groups will be opposing, among other things, a strong military, genetically modified crops, technology, tax vouchers for education, global trade and welfare reform. They will be advocating fully socialized medicine, higher taxes on the wealthy and ending missile defense research. The “People’s Convention,” a counter-convention representing various socialist and communist organizations, will offer a platform that includes a guaranteed wage to everyone--even those who choose not to work--and nationalization of all property belonging to people whose wealth exceeds an unspecified minimum level. A core motto of the convention protesters will be “Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed.”

Although the protesting groups may seem on the surface to be as varied as snowflakes, at root they are united by their common hatred of freedom, capitalism and progress. A strong U.S. military is essential to our freedom because numerous dictatorships, such as China, North Korea and Iraq, are developing long-range missiles that will be directed at the United States. Crops that are genetically engineered to increase yields will become lifesavers as the population continues to increase at a rapid rate. Technological progress will benefit us in numerous other ways: increasing airline and automobile safety, raising energy efficiency and curing deadly diseases. The latter soon will include the ability to grow new organs from patients’ own cells to replace diseased or damaged organs.

Tax vouchers for education will allow parents who cannot afford private schools to select schools of their choice, thus undermining the government’s unconscionable monopoly in this area. As to socialized medicine, it can have only one effect: poor medical care for everyone. America’s remnants of private medicine still bring people desperate for treatment from all over the world.

Now consider the real meaning of the “Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed” slogan. Capitalism has brought our country, and every other country that has tried it, a higher standard of living than any other system. Socialism has brought humanity nothing but stagnation, poverty and suffering in every country that has embraced it; witness Cuba, North Korea, Russia. That which the protesters call “corporate greed”--which presumably means a free economy and the desire for profit--is the only means to satisfy human needs on a large scale.

The protesters will reply that capitalism denies “social justice” because every person (and every country) does not make the same amount of money. They view the rich as immoral and regard the United States as the guiltiest country on Earth because it is so wealthy. What the protesters want is to drain the wealth of the producers and give it to those who are not productive.

They are right on one point: Capitalism is the antithesis of egalitarianism. Under capitalism, people get only what they earn; they do not have the right to seize what someone else has earned. What the socialists want is an unjust world, a world where they forcibly harness the able, the competent, the hard-working--the productive--to reward the nonproductive. What the protesters refuse to acknowledge is that capitalism is the system of genuine “social justice.”

Why are the protesters choosing the Democratic convention as their venue? Because they know where their ideological home is. The Democrats always have championed the “little guy,” which often has meant penalizing those who made it big. But as philosopher Ayn Rand once noted, there are no little people in America. There are only people, equal before the law, yearning to breathe free and wanting to achieve the best within them.

Most Americans do not hate the rich and do not feel guilty because some people or nations are less rich than they are. They do not want to enslave their doctors or their teachers or their inventors or their business leaders--or themselves. They want real justice: Each person gets what he earns and has no moral claim on the property of others. They respect individual rights and admire, rather than envy, those who are successful in their lives and careers.

In opposing freedom, progress and justice, the protesters are opposing everything that is good about America. Let us have some counterdemonstrators at the Democratic convention, holding up signs that reveal a love for the good: man at his best, man as free, independent, responsible for his own life, proud of his achievements and unwilling to be sacrificial fodder for those who would enslave him.