Intellectual Ammunition for the Fight Against Government Control

While browsing recently, I stumbled upon a series of short lectures that should be of great interest to those who follow any Ayn Rand forum. The videos were recorded from the ‘intellectual ammunition strategy session’, co-hosted by The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and The Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC on September the 11^th. This session was held to offer the September 12 Washington, DC tea party protesters better knowledge and a wider understanding of the ideas they were fighting for and those they were fighting against. Many speakers spoke at the event, and the entire session is available here in a series of five videos (30-45 minutes each).

I have viewed the first session so far, and found it extremely engaging. Lin Zinser, vice president of the Ayn Rand Center, introduced the session and she was followed by the first speaker, CEI senior fellow Iain Murray. He spoke on the historical background of the original tea party protests that took place in the years leading up to the American independence. What he revealed was a fascinating aspect of history that I had no idea about. In tracing the British roots of the American struggle for individual rights, he revealed that the battle for individual freedom goes back as far as 1381, with the peasant revolt in London. From there he built up a fascinating story, covering those important moments in British history that finally led to a recognition of the rule of law and the rights of the individual, and also culminated in the American tea party protests and, finally, the American independence.

Viewing this talk is a wonderful opportunity to find out how the common classes of Britain revolted, time and again, against government influence. However, in the absence of any substantial ideas on limited government and liberty, these early protests, according to Murray, were the result of an almost instinctive perception of injustice. Eventually, though, the ideas that had sprung with these modest beginnings, found their way into the British parliament, and, thanks to John Locke, into the mainstream of philosophical and political thought. Finally, the notion of individual rights and limited government traveled across the Atlantic, and was adopted and developed further by the founding fathers of the American constitution.

Click here to view how Murray, like a historical detective, traces back the path of liberty.