“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
—Thomas Paine on the American Revolution
“CapitalistPig” Jonathan Hoenig edited and published the anthology A New Textbook of Americanism. It features the original Textbook of Americanism, a series of essays in question-and-answer format that Ayn Rand wrote to explain the individualist principles upon which the republic was founded. Ayn Rand was not able to complete the entire series, but she wrote out a list of the remaining philosophic questions she had intended to answer. For the remainder of A New Textbook, Jonathan and other Objectivist scholars have taken it upon themselves to answer those remaining questions, both according to their own knowledge of the subjects and also according to how they think Ayn Rand might have answered. I have assisted Jonathan in the editing and contributed an answer to the question “How to identify a Nazi?”
The online conservative periodical The Resurgent has published an op-ed from me on this topic that is adapted from the book, “What’s the True Meaning of Americanism?”
Previously I have written that, on account of it being founded on principles of openness and on rewarding individual businesses for their merit, regardless of their country of headquarters — prioritizing such individual merit above collectivist nationalist and ethnic considerations — America is and always has been “the globalist republic,” in the best possible meaning of globalist. I stand by that, and in the op-ed, I add another layer: America was founded as the Independent Republic. I say,
In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal and independent...” In keeping with the burgeoning philosophy of its time, the Age of Enlightenment, this draft declared independence in a respect even more significant than independence from Britain: that each peaceful adult is independent in how he is to navigate his life. In more context than one, then, America was always to be the Independent Republic. This idea came to be known in the late nineteenth century as the spirit of Horatio Alger, and what twentieth-century historian James Truslow Adams later dubbed “the American dream.”
Not only is it possible to be both an independent individualist and an economic globalist, but to describe oneself as both is to be redundant.
A parochial collectivist — an economic nationalist — will demand that his fellow countrymen purchase goods or services primarily according to whether it benefits other members of their ethnicity or some other group designation in which they had no choice in joining. The parochial collectivist and economic nationalist expects that his countrymen prioritize this over their individualistic freedom to purchase peaceably whatever good or service best serves their individual needs.
By contrast, the independent individualist prioritizes the satisfaction of her own individual needs, and knows that maximizing the opportunity of completing this task requires that she have the freedom to purchase such goods or services from any peaceable vendor from anywhere, including vendors who are not of her race, sex, or cultural background.
I thank Katherine Revello, who maintains the Politics of Discretion weblog, for pointing out to me that Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence said that “all men are created equal and independent.” The Declaration remains beautiful and important, but its meaning would have been even clearer if that independent had been kept in the final version.
Yes, America is the Independent Republic — not only independent from a colonial master, but the republic wherein the independent individual has the freedom to thrive, doing business with other independent individuals throughout the world.
