by Tim Peck | Mountain Xpress | 01/14/2009
I applaud Western Carolina University for their wisdom in accepting the very generous donation from BB&T, a successful financial institution that practices what it preaches ["Capitalism on Campus"]. And I applaud BB&T for [requesting] as a condition of their generosity that WCU include Ayn Rand’s remarkable novel Atlas Shrugged in their required reading list and teach the substance of her political philosophy of capitalism in their business school. Capitalism is superior among all systems of social organization.
Capitalism says that you have the right to live your life freely, to contract with others without interference, to form associations of your own choosing, to engage in commerce and trade with others for mutual profit, and to travel wherever your heart desires – so long as you do not injure anyone else's right to do the same.
Capitalism says that you have a right to own property and to use and dispose of that property as you see fit, in both private and business spheres – so long as you do not injure anyone else's right to do the same.
Capitalism says that you are the captain of your own destiny and that you are permitted by right to seek and sustain life-supporting values – so long as you do not injure anyone else's right to do the same.
Capitalism says that governments are established to protect your inalienable rights through a secular constitution, adherence to a rule of law, enforcements through police and courts, and a vigorous national defense. And furthermore, that there should be a strict wall of separation between economy and state.
Unregulated laissez-faire free-market Capitalism is the political-economic social system of freedom and is the only system that recognizes, respects and actively seeks to protect our rights and minds from predation, force, and fraud, from whatever source, whether it be our neighbor, hostile nations, or our own government. This country needs and deserves Capitalism now more than ever and I am hopeful that this can be achieved in our own lifetimes – and for the first time.
There is, and has long been, a preponderance of instruction in colleges and universities across our country teaching, and even promoting, the pernicious principles and practices of Socialism, Marxism, and other various statist hybrids, including our own political-economic system of Interventionism.
It is well past time for grant-making foundations to offer and for our educational institutions to expose our young adults to some measure of intellectual diversity in an academic setting, however slight (as indeed this is), as a gesture of respect for their capacity for independent thought and rational judgment, which supposedly have been inculcated in them throughout the course of their formal education.
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