I am not a philosopher, and Dr. Hambright may argue that I was not even a good student of Political Science. Nevertheless, following is a capsule of my core philosophy, first incorporated into a formal school of thought called Objectivism by Any Rand.

My mother gave Atlas Shrugged to me for my eighth grade summer reading project. While I did not finish the book at that time, upon reading Shrugged in total in 1999, I recognized that Rand expressed my philosophy more clearly that I was able to put it into succinct words. I have read it annually since.  Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead should be required reading for all High School graduates. Following is my philosophy, amended from Ayn Rand’s statement of her philosophy in 1962. Her original version can be found at the Ayn Rand Institute.

My philosophy, Objectivism, is a philosophy regarding:

1. Metaphysics: Objective Reality
2. Epistemology: Reason
3. Ethics: Self-interest
4. Politics: Capitalism

Rand suggest that this may be simply translated as:

1. “Wishing won’t make it so.”
2. “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.”
3. “Man is an end in himself.”
4. “Give me liberty or give me death.”

My philosophy holds that:

1. Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
2. Reason (that which defines man as unique among God’s creations) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of earthly survival.
3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He was created by God and in the image of God, separating him from all other of His creations. This image was not of God’s physical appearance, but that of a mind; of a choice- of a free will. Therefore, from a political or economic perspective, man must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his public life; his private life is defined through his religion, or lack thereof.
4. The ideal, and only moral political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism; a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

Our nation was rationally founded on a premise: man was created. To assume that man is an accident or the result of evolution is preposterous, and degrades the exception to the universe that is the ability to reason that is Man. Any discussion regarding the rights or ability of man must begin with this understanding.

Thus, everything begins at the beginning; from Genesis:

²⁶And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… ²⁷So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

It is not likely that God has two arms and two legs; rather that he has free-will; this is the image of God. Of all of God’s creations, man was the only one that had free-will- the ability to make choices; to learn and pass that learning along; the ability to choose to worship Him- or to not. God gave man a rational MIND. It is the mind of man that is the uniqueness of God’s creation, and the likeness of Him. The purpose for which man was created is to choose to worship Him, but this is a choice that God gave the individual, not a decision of government.

In the fewest possible words: If God gave man the choice to worship or to not worship; to sin or to not sin; to eat of the tree or to not eat of the tree, who am I to place myself in a position above God in the life of another? It is from this question all political decisions must be derived.

What, then, is the proper role of Government in the lives of individuals? If God grants the ability of man to succeed or to fail, to harvest the fields or to starve, can a government derived among men do anything more? The only way that government can do so is to rob man of the choices God granted man- to steal from the individual the productive effort of his mind to then give to another.

The only way to measure the use of a mind- of reason- is productivity. One must produce- use one’s mind to excel in what you do. Thus the use of your mind in a productive way is inherently worshipful to God. This may only be measured by profitability.

So then, can a Christian be non-productive, or non-profitable? I don’t see how. The greatest gift that God gave man is His Son, but it was the ability to reason that made man a man and not an animal. How can man worship Christ if man does not choose to reason first; how can he worship if he does not choose to first be productive.

It seems that many believe they can accept Christ, without accepting reason (reason requires responsibility- A = A; lack of responsibility is contradictory to reason.) This lack of reason leads many Christians to believe that they can forcibly coerce others to “donate” to worthy causes, be it national health care, the homeless, or corporate bailouts.

The morality of the Bible is to allow man these choices. To deny these choices through various social programs is inherently immoral. To rob from one to give to another is inherently immoral. This is the morality of Christ in politics.

In fairness to Rand and the purist of Objectivism, I must state that my belief in Christ is directly contradictory to Objectivism as Rand defined it.

Rand and Objective purist make one step (reason) and not the other (Christ). However, this does not create a flaw in the rational, especially when applied to a world that has never made the first connection, let alone the second.