Post-11/4 survival guide

“Western civilization had an Age of Reason and an Age of Enlightenment. In those periods, the quest for reason and enlightenment was the dominant intellectual drive and created a corresponding emotional atmosphere that fostered these values. Today we live in an Age of Envy.” – Ayn Rand

As of the writing of this column, it’s not yet known whether Americans chose as our next president the liberal quasi-socialist with little executive experience or his Democratic opponent, who’s even worse. But it really doesn’t matter, because either way, we’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to spend the rest of our lives knowing the freedom and prosperity we experienced growing up. We must devote precious time and energy we normally would’ve spent pursuing our own dreams fighting for the very right to pursue these dreams at all.

One of the characteristics of a free society is that we can do the things we love, whether working to provide for our future, raising families, volunteering or pursuing any number of various sources of fulfillment.

For most of us, this doesn’t naturally include civic engagement. When things are going well, we tend to forget government is even there. Ironically, this is almost how it’s supposed to work. Ideally, the government exists to provide security and to protect our individual rights, and then gets out of the way for us to live as we wish.

Unfortunately, this leads to complacency, allowing the government to be taken over when we’re not paying attention by people whose personal dreams consist of ruling others and taking by force that which they haven’t earned. The government becomes oppressive and too involved in determining what types of activities are allowed, and how much wealth is “too much.”

It converts from an agent of justice into a system in which some citizens “legitimize” the looting of their neighbors. The incentives of hard work, honesty, self-determination and ambition are removed, and a new values system of envy, greed and mediocrity is imposed.

Individuals aren’t encouraged to be the best they can be, living life to its fullest. They’re compelled into compliance, sacrificing their own potential in the name of some supposed “greater common good.”

People begin to use their faculties of reason and creativity not for innovation and productivity but for trying to manipulate the system so they’ll get their “fair share” when the next overly-successful individual or firm is plundered.

The more honest among us will spend our brain-power trying to break free of the system’s constraints. And that is what we must do.

All of us who would not see this great country stifled by centralized control and inefficient, corruption-prone bureaucracy must begin to aggressively educate ourselves and our fellow citizens. This won’t happen in the classroom alone, and we must take the initiative to learn about history and sound political philosophy.

If we’re to know the joy of governing our own lives in the future, we must fight now for our freedom, arming ourselves with ideas. We cannot ignore the politicians and bureaucrats and hope they’ll go away.

We must defeat them.