Capitalism 2.0: Character

I have to say that one thing our new president does not lack is character. He is doing what he said he would do: redistribute wealth and perpetrate socialism. He is very consistent with his campaign rhetoric, and that is refreshing to see in this world full of two-faced people with no character.

Well, on that topic, and since we’ve had a number of comments on this series about character, integrity and conscience, let’s take a look at what Ayn Rand has to say about each:

“We have only two sources of information about the character of the people around us: we judge them by what they do and by what they say (particularly the first), proclaims John Galt in his radio address.

Rand writes, “Just as man’s physical survival depends on his own effort, so does his psychological survival. Man faces two corollary, interdependent fields of action in which a constant exercise of choice and a constant creative process are demanded of him: the world around him and his own soul (by “soul,” I mean his consciousness). Just as he has to produce the material values he needs to sustain his life, so he has to acquire the values of character that enable him to sustain it and that make his life worth living. He is born without the knowledge of either. He has to discover both—and translate them into reality—and survive by shaping the world and himself in the image of his values.”

Barack Obama is governing America precisely in the image of his own values. Socialist values. Those are the values he championed in his campaign.

And those are precisely the values that made me very nervous during the campaign, and why, despite my respect for the man, I was not thrilled about Obama’s ascendancy to the American presidency.

Because, I did sense that we have a man of character in President Obama. A man with values. A man who intends to live by those values, and not blow with the wind as politicians more often than not do.

And as a result, we are faced with the risk of a systemic destruction of free-market capitalism, a value that I still believe in, even though I am happy to acknowledge that it needs some tweaks.

What I don’t think Capitalism 2.0 needs is a complete negation of Capitalism 1.0.

This segment is a part in the series : Capitalism 2.0