Brave and far-sighted men — Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1804–1806), Kit Carson (1820s-1850s), John Fremont (1840s), and more — pushed west across America's vast frontier and opened the way for the physical expansion of a liberty-loving country.
Today, brave and far-sighted men and women must look back to another "West," this time to the Euro-American enlightenment values that literally created the United States as the first consciously-rationally created nation in history.
The current mission is to forge ahead by establishing a new frontier for those values to flourish again not only to chart a philosophical path to an expanded future but also to save what is left of a culturally shrinking Western civilization. The journey now must be guided not by exploring new land but by exploring renewed ideas.
Ergo: As president of the United States Thomas Jefferson led the land exploration by commissioning Lewis and Clark, we now must look to an able leader for our philosophical exploration. Interestingly, among many outstanding and operative figures the same two historical philosophers who largely influenced Jefferson also influenced this modern-day ideational leader's thinking. Who are those philosophers?
We start with the ancient Greek "jump-starter" of the seminal ideas that birthed Western civilization: Aristotle. This revolutionary thinker originated the identification that reality is what it is — Metaphysics —and that reason is a human being's method of knowing reality —Epistemology.
All entities have a unique fundamental nature that is unalterable, and humans rely on the faculties of sensory perception to observe reality and noncontradictory thinking to survive within it. This fundamental premise — reality is what it is — and its corollary — humans must use reason to know reality — underpinned the theories of all philosophical and scientific movers and shakers who advanced Western civilization from then on.
There were many (and many mixed), but for our purpose we can hop-skip from Aristotle to 17th-century Englishman John Locke, who fortified the subsequent 18th-century enlightenment ideas of individual agency, reason, liberty, and scientific inquiry as the necessities for human happiness by stressing self-ownership and the individual right to one's own personal life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness.
It was these ideas that America's founding framers — all well-read-multi-language-educated men conversant with Aristotle and Locke—amplified to create the United States Constitution. And it was these (literally) same liberating ideas that broke the Medieval Catholic Church's power-hold on the European populace and freed every individual to flourish via their own will and ability.
Creativity and productivity everywhere in Europe soared, and the subsequent Industrial Revolution ushered in a century bursting with new life-enhancing products and procedures.
Russian-born Alisa Rosenbaum (1905-1982), after emigrating to America in 1926 to become the novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, was deeply influenced by these same ideas and philosophers — Aristotle specifically and Locke obliquely.
Rand lived and suffered personally through the Russian Revolution, so she knew firsthand the real-life evils of collectivism and totalitarianism under Bolshevik rule.
Unlike most academically trained philosophers, she chose to introduce her philosophy which she named "Objectivism" via novels: The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), the first revolving around an uncompromising architect and championing individualism over collectivism, and the second dramatizing her philosophy explicitly through a dystopian story of industrious individuals withdrawing their productivity from a society that exploits rather than values them.
She later published "The Objectivist" newsletter outlining her philosophy in detail, relating it to other philosophies and current events, and doing much public speaking along with countless TV interviews.
So, although reading her work directly is best, what here can explicate her "new frontier" philosophy in a nutshell? Once, when challenged to sum up her philosophy "while standing on one foot," she answered:
"Metaphysics: Reality; Epistemology: Reason; Ethics: Self-interest; Politics: Capitalism."
Now, let's unpack those few concise words. Each represents a major branch of philosophy and her position within it:
- There is an objective reality that exists independently of consciousness.
- Reason is a human's only means of acquiring knowledge.
- Rational self-interest is the proper moral purpose of one's life, emphasis on rational, meaning one has a right to do whatever one wants as long as it does not interfere with the rights of any other.
- The only moral societal system is laissez-faire capitalism where individuals deal with one another by voluntary exchange without government interference.
It is crucial to note that this ideationally universal philosophy provides a wide canopy under which all individuals of any religious persuasion (or none) can gather to work together. No matter one's personal belief system, who would argue against fundamental values supporting individual freedom and a non-interfering government as stated above?
Objectivism elucidates in modern terms the very same enlightenment values that brought the West out from the Medieval Dark Age and created America; thus, it is today's only internally consistent philosophy that can appeal and apply to every individual everywhere.
By working together, guided by these freedom-loving principles, we can return sanity to a suicidal Western civilization feeding poisonous politically correct or "woke" ideas to the young and so-labeled "victimized groups," while simultaneously rolling back an authoritarian-bent governmental collectivist tyranny: socialism-fascism-communism-progressivism, all alike with different names.
Western civilization is not only surrendering sovereignty by accepting inhumane, divisive ideas, it also is caught in a hard place between militant Muslims and internationally united autocratic elites, the first wishing to replace us and the second wishing to rule us.
The future, if there is to be one, now lies in the rational and freedom-loving minds and action-oriented readiness of an American populace that must put differences — usually artificially created by those who would rule or ruin us — aside.
We must form grassroots citizen teams local or large to rescue our country (inspiring other Western-minded peoples to do likewise) in order to defeat elitist tyrants who would rob us of our liberty and chain us all to their will or others who chant "Death to America" and mean it.
Time is fleeting and the expiry toll by internal suicide, elite suppression, or Islamic supremacy chimes loudly.
Alexandra York is an author and founding president of the American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART) a New-York-City-based nonprofit educational arts and culture foundation. She has written for many publications, including "Reader's Digest" and The New York Times. She is the author of "Crosspoints A Novel of Choice." Her most recent book is "Soul Celebrations and Spiritual Snacks." For more on Alexandra York — Go Here Now.