Ayn Rand's Birthday was first celebrated by Thomas Robert Stevens on February 2, 1983. The Objectivist Party, founded by Dr. Tom Stevens on February 2, 2008, invites everyone to actively participate in celebration of the life of Ayn Rand on February 2nd, her birthday, by doing one or more of the following:
1. Spend the day doing whatever makes YOU happy. Engage in purposeful, meaningful and productive activities of which you can be proud.
2. Do an Internet Search for "Ayn Rand" and read an article about her amazing life.
3. Do an Internet Search for "Objectivism" and learn something about her philosophy.
4. Commit to reading one fiction or non-fiction book written by or about Ayn Rand.
5. Hold a meeting or sponsor a forum about Ayn Rand or Objectivism at your school, on-line, or in your community sometime around her birthday.
Free Trade Day is celebrated on May 8th, the birth date of Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist who championed free trade.
Free Trade Day was started by Dr. Tom Stevens, the founder of the Objectivist Party. It was created so people can be made more aware of the importance of free trade to an efficient economy, wealth creation and a better standard of living.
Celebrate Free Trade Day by doing one or more of the following:
1. Read about Free Trade.
2. Read about Friedrich Hayek and his economic theories.
3. Run a seminar, hold a meeting, or sponsor a debate on the importance of "free trade" to enabling people to realize their potential and survive through the use of reason.
Free trade can be contrasted with protectionism, which is the economic policy of restricting trade between nations. Trade may be restricted by high tariffs on imported or exported goods, restrictive quotas, a variety of restrictive government regulations designed to discourage imports, and anti-dumping laws designed to protect domestic industries from foreign take-over or competition.
Free trade is a term in economics and government that includes:
1. Trade of goods without taxes (including tariffs) or other trade barriers (e.g., quotas on imports or subsidies for producers)
2. Trade in services without taxes or other trade barriers
3. The absence of trade-distorting policies (such as taxes, subsidies, regulations or laws) that give some firms, households or factors of production an advantage over others
4. Free access to markets
5. Free access to market information
6. Inability of firms to distort markets through government-imposed monopoly or oligopoly power
7. The free movement of labor between and within countries
8. The free movement of capital between and within countries
SPACE EXPLORATION DAY JULY 20th
Space Exploration Day is celebrated on July 20th, the day in 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin first set foot on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission.
Space Exploration Day was founded by Dr. Tom Stevens and was first celebrated on July 20, 1970. It was created to promote the private, entrepreneurial development, exploration and colonization of our solar system, galaxy, and universe.
Celebrate Space Exporation Day by doing one or more of the following:
1. Hold an event on July 20th to celebrate Space Exploration Day (e.g. Dinner at Mars 2112).
2. Research efforts to promote the space tourist industry.
3. Research efforts to to promote the private, entrepreneurial development, exploration and colonization of our solar system, galaxy, and universe.
4. Run a seminar, hold a meeting, or sponsor a debate on the importance of the private exploration of space.
Neil Armstrong said "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," just before imprinting his boot in the lunar dust. Armstrong was joined on the moon by fellow crewmember Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. The third astronaut, Michael Collins, orbited in the mission's command module.
Armstrong and Aldrin spent only a few hours on the moon, walking about and setting up some simple experiments. They left their footprints, a United States flag, and a plaque that read, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the Moon -- July 1969 A.D. -- We came in peace for all mankind."
Only 12 people have walked on the moon, the last two in December 1972. Last year U.S. President George W. Bush committed the country to a return to the moon by 2015. The plan is to eventually use the moon as a stage in missions to Mars and beyond.
SKYSCRAPER APPRECIATION DAY August 10th
Skyscraper Appreciation Day is celebrated on August 10th, the birth date of William Van Alen, the primary architect behind the construction of the Chrysler Building, the most popular skyscraper in New York City.
Skyscraper Appreciation Day was started in 2009 by Dr. Tom Stevens, the founder of the Objectivist Party. It was created so people can appreciate the engineering and architectural marvels we know as skyscrapers, which represent the triumph of reason and of man's industrial nature.
Celebrate Skyscraper Appreiciation Day by doing one or more of the following:
1. Research the history of skyscrapers.
2. Visit an interesting skyscraper near your home.
3. Select photos of your favorite skyscrapers and post them to the "Photos" section of this Facebook Group.
4. Visit "The Skyscraper Museum", a private, not-for-profit, educational corporation devoted to the study of highrise buildings, which is located in lower Manhattan. http://www.skyscraper.org/home.htm
Ayn Rand loved skyscrapers. She loved them not only for their phallic erectness, but because they symbolized exactly what she stood for and what she thought was best about not only our country but our whole Western civilization. She wrote a brilliant paean to one such building in The Fountainhead:
"The building stood on the shore of the East River, a structure rapt as raised arms. The rock crystal forms mounted in such eloquent steps that the building did not seem stationary, but moving upward in a continuous flow - until one realized that it was only the movement of one’s glance and that one’s glance was forced to move in that particular rhythm. The walls of pale gray limestone looked silver against the sky, with the clean, dulled luster of metal, but a metal that had become a warm, living substance, carved by the most cutting of all instruments - a purposeful human will; the skyscrapers, the shapes of man’s achievement on earth." (The Fountainhead, pgs. 300 & 327)
In an article entitled "The Skyscraper: A Gesture To Reason, Freedom and Human Life" (April 27, 2003) published in Capitalism Magazine, Joseph Kellard wrote:
"The skyscraper's true symbolic gesture is captured best by philosopher Leonard Peikoff, when he said of his associate Ayn Rand: 'New York, the skyscrapers, everything that man had traversed from the time of the cave to the time of this glorious and industrial civilization, that was to [her the pinnacle of human achievement in physical terms.] It wasn't just acquiring philosophy. It was acquiring ideas, acquiring science and then remaking the earth accordingly. And she couldn't think of a more splendid and exciting and beautiful place than that view that you get of the skyscrapers when you don't see the details of each one, but the mass of ingenuity and talent soaring for the sky.'"
Regarding New York's skyline, Ayn Rand said:
"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline... The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need?... When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body."
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS DAY August 29th
Individual Rights Day is celebrated on August 29th, the birth date of John Locke, the philosopher who first prominently argued that a human being has a basic property right based upon his status as a soveriegn human being and that it is the government's role to protect that right and not to treat its citizens as slaves.
Individual Rights Day was started by Dr. Tom Stevens, the founder of the Objectivist Party. It was created so people can contemplate the importance of this concept to man's right to life and to use reason to ensure his own survival.
Celebrate Individual Rights Day by doing one or more of the following:
1. Read about John Locke and his political philosophy that respects man's sovereignty over his own body.
2. Read about Ayn Rand and her basis for recognizing that every man is born with "individual rights" that cannot be trampled upon by government or by others.
3. Contrast the concept of "individual rights" with those of "collective rights".
4. Run a seminar, hold a meeting, or sponsor a debate on the importance of "individual rights" as the basis for man's liberties and freedoms.
John Locke stated in "The Second Treatise On Civil Government" - "Every man has a property in his own person this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say are properly his...The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property."
John Locke quotations on "Individual Rights":
“Reason...teaches all Mankind, who would but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.”
"Government can never have a Power to take to themselves the whole or any part of the Subjects Property, without their own consent."
“’Tis a Mistake to think this Fault [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it, as well as that. For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many.”
"Whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge...against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society; and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty.”
Ayn Rand quotations on "Individual Rights":
"A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)...Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights."
"The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave."
“Man holds these rights, not from the Collective nor for the Collective, but against the Collective—as a barrier which the Collective cannot cross...these rights are man’s protection against all other men."
“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life."
"Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual)."
"The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully—and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives—the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience."