Ayn Rand
Some quotes by Ayn Rand on Liberty from the essay "Man's Rights"
"...
If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of
others, it means those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave
labor.
Any
alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the
rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.
No
man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an
involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as "the
right to enslave."
A
right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men;
it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort.
Observe,
in this context, the intellectual precision of the Founding Fathers: they
spoke of the right to the pursuit of happiness--not of the
right to happiness. It means that a man has the right to take the actions
he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it does not mean that
others must make him happy.
The
right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work
(on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not
mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.
The
right to property means that a man has the right to take the economic actions
necessary to earn property, to use it and to dispose of it; it does not
mean that others must provide him with property.
The
right of free speech means that a man has the right to express his ideas without
danger of suppression, interference, or punitive action by the government.
It does not mean that others must provide him with a lecture hall, a
radio station or a printing press through which to express his ideas.
Some quotes from Ayn Rand's essay "Conservatism: An Obituary":
"Both
the "conservatives" and the "liberals" stress a fact with
which everybody seems to agree: that the world is facing a deadly conflict
and that we must fight to save civilization.
But
what is the nature of that conflict? Both groups answer: it is a
conflict between communism and ... what?--blank out. It is a conflict
between two ways of life, they answer, the communist way and ... what?--blank
out. It is a conflict between two ideologies, they answer. What is our
ideology? Blank out.
The
truth which both groups refuse to face and to admit is that, politically, the
world conflict of today is the last stage of the struggle between capitalism
and statism.
We
stand for freedom,
say both groups--and proceed to declare what kind of controls, regulations,
coercions, taxes, and "sacrifices" they would impose, what arbitrary
powers they would demand, what "social gains" they would hand out to
various groups, without specifying from what other groups these
"gains" would be expropriated. Neither of them cares to admit
that government control of a country's economy--any kind or degree of such
control, by any group, for any purpose whatsoever--rests on the basic principle
of statism,
the principle that man's life belongs to the state. A mixed economy is
merely a semi-socialized economy--which means: a semi-enslaved society--which
means: a country torn by irreconcilable contradictions, in the process of
gradual disintegration.
Freedom,
in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does
not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom
from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity.
It means freedom from the coercive power of the state--and nothing else.
The
world conflict of today is the conflict of the individual against the state, the
same conflict that has been fought throughout mankind's history. The names
change, but the essence--and the results--remain the same, whether it is the
individual against feudalism, or against absolute monarchy, or against communism
or fascism or Nazism or socialism or the welfare state. ...
The issue is not slavery for a "good" cause versus slavery for a "bad" cause; the issue is not dictatorship by a "good" gang versus dictatorship by a "bad" gang. The issue is freedom versus dictatorship. It is only after men have chosen slavery and dictatorship that they can begin the usual gang warfare of socialized countries--today, it is called pressure-group (now special interest-group) warfare--over whose gang will rule, who will enslave whom, whose property will be plundered for whose benefit, who will be sacrificed to whose "noble" purpose. All such arguments come later and are, in fact, of no consequence: the results will always be the same. The first choice--and the only one that matters--is: freedom or dictatorship, capitalism or statism.