Happy Independence Day!

Editor's Note: I will be taking tomorrow off from blogging for the holiday.

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I highly recommend taking about 15 minutes to read (or reread) Ayn Rand's penetrating essay, "Man's Rights." It is both a valuable reminder for patriots -- and a needed corrective for a society that has all but forgotten -- about what rights are, where they come from, and what they are for.

The essay also beautifully encapsulates what makes America great, and why we should celebrate her:

Image by Ben Soyka, via Unsplash, license.

The most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States of America was the subordination of society to moral law.

The principle of man's individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system -- as a limitation on the power of the state, as man's protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first moral society in history.

All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man's life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man's life is his by right (which means: by moral principle and by his nature), that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights. [my bold]

While America faces major problems, there is no need to make her "great again." America is already great for the reasons given above.

Let us celebrate Independence Day with full knowledge of this greatness, and commit ourselves to helping it continue by working to remind our countrymen of that fact whenever and however we can.

-- CAV