Honoring three champions of liberty

At a time when too many people seem intent on sending freedom to the dustbin of history, Women's History Month offers an opportunity to pay tribute to women whose ideas and words have renewed the love of freedom for generations of readers.

“Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man's mind,” one wrote. “A rational mind does not work under compulsion; it does not subordinate its grasp of reality to anyone's orders, directives, or control ... it may be silenced, proscribed, imprisoned, or destroyed; it cannot be forced; a gun is not an argument.”

Those are the words of Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand. Born in 1905, she came to the United States in 1926 and found work in Hollywood, where she pursued a career as a screenwriter. Best known as the author of the novels “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” she sought to create heroic characters who depicted man at his best, and in doing so she identified the philosophical principles that made those heroes possible. After the 1957 publication of “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand wrote articles, essays and newspaper columns that described and applied her philosophy, which she named Objectivism. Her continuing influence can be measured in book sales — according to the Ayn Rand Institute, based in Santa Ana, every book by Ayn Rand published in her lifetime is still in print, with more than 25 million copies sold. Hundreds of thousands of copies of her books are sold every year.

Read her description of how dictatorships hold power: “It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men's spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; it has to deal not in death, but in sudden death; a state of chronic uncertainty is what men are psychologically unable to bear.”

Now read her description of how freedom survives: “If one upholds freedom, one must uphold man's individual rights; if one upholds man's individual rights, one must uphold his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness — which means: one must uphold a political system that guarantees and protects these rights — which means: the politico-economic system of capitalism.”

In 1943, Rand praised a new book titled “The God of the Machine” as “a document that could literally save the world.” The author of that book was Isabel Paterson, a journalist, novelist, political philosopher and prominent literary critic. Born in Canada in 1886, Paterson came to the United States as a young child and lived in rural Michigan. Except for two years of formal schooling in a tiny schoolhouse, she was entirely selfeducated.

“The God of the Machine” is a masterpiece that chronicles the connection between different political systems and the economic consequences they produce, presented as an engineering problem. She shows that the American system, based on individual rights, unleashed the dynamo of production and prosperity unlike anything that had ever been seen in human history, even as other political systems continued to produce hardship, famines and wars.

In a chapter titled, “The Humanitarian with the Guillotine,”

How to have your say:

she writes, “Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.” Paterson illustrates the chilling historical record of societies organized around the idea that “everyone should live primarily for others.”

She writes wryly, “Is each person to do exactly what any other person wants him to do, without limits or reservations? And only what others want him to do? What if various persons make conflicting demands? The scheme is impracticable ... Of course what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.”

Paterson argues for liberty and her arguments are fierce. “The philanthropist, the politician, and the pimp are inevitably found in alliance because they have the same motives, they seek the same ends, to exist for, through, and by others,” she writes.

In a chapter on “The Structure of the United States,” Paterson finds that the founders “solved the problem on which the Roman Empire had failed.” The principles of the Constitution “embody relations,” she wrote, “and are thus capable of infinitely complex application.” Because of the existence of the United States, “what happened was that the dynamo of the energy used in human association was located. It is in the individual ... the dynamo is the mind, the creative intelligence.”

Echoing this insight was Rose Wilder Lane, who engaged with both Rand and particularly Paterson.

Rose Wilder Lane was born in the Dakota Territory in 1886 to Almanzo Wilder and author Laura Ingalls Wilder, who is best known for writing “The Little House on the Prairie” series.

Like Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane became a journalist. Initially interested in communist ideology, Rose Wilder Lane became disenchanted after visiting the Soviet Union. “I came out of the Soviet Union no longer a communist, because I believed in personal freedom,” she wrote.

In the years that followed, Lane became a strident critic of the racism of her times — calling on Americans to renounce the “ridiculous, idiotic and tragic fallacy of race” — an opponent of the “creeping socialism” of the New Deal, and a defender of the limitations on power put in the place by the Constitution of the United States.

In a powerful 1936 essay, Lane asked, “Will an American defend the Constitutional law that divides, restricts, limits and weakens political-police power, and thus protects every citizen's personal freedom, his human rights, his exercise of those rights in a free, productive, capitalist economy and a free society? Or will he permit the political structure of these United States to be replaced by a socialist state, with its centralized, unrestricted police power regimenting individuals into classes, suppressing individual liberty, sacrificing human rights to an imagined `common good,' and substituting for civil laws the edicts, or `directives,' once accurately called tyranny and now called administrative law?”

These are the questions Americans must continue to ask themselves today.

All three women — Rand, Paterson and Lane — understood the value and fragility of liberty. We commend their contributions to human freedom and encourage all Americans to consider reading their works.

We welcome letters on all issues of public concern. All are subject to editing and condensation, and they can be published only with the writer's true name. Letters must include the writer's home community and daytime telephone number for verification purposes. Please limit letters to 150words.

The dangers of rewriting books and whitewashing our literary history

First, kudos to Susan Shelley for a spot-on column (March 5) on the dangers of rewriting books to quiet the whiney woke. Second, I'm curious what “complete whitewashing of our history” (March 8) letter writer Janet Cerswell is talking about? Although admittedly it has been a while since I was a kid in school, I remember learning about slavery, the maltreatment of Native Americans, segregation and the Japanese internment camps during WWII, among other topics concerning U.S. history. I also taught elementary school for a few years and know for a fact that these topics are discussed. A better example of whitewashing our history is the continued removal of historical statues and names of our Founding Fathers on buildings, schools, streets, etc. that “offend” certain people. Third, bring back “Dilbert.” Let the readers decide what to read and what not to read.

— Bobbie Carey, San Clemente

Bullet train is draining we the people of California

Re “The bullet train just won't go away” (March 5):

The taxpayers of California have been robbed profusely of their money. The best solution is to have Elon Musk build the train and it'll be done probably under budget and in a timely manner. Oh wait, then the government officials won't get kickbacks to make themselves richer. Musk builds tunnels,

Walgreens

I thought elected officials were to serve constituents.

Walgreens will provide services to Californians, yet because some other states have different policies, Gov. Newsom will penalize those covered by MediCal and Covered California and say they can't use their benefits there for other services?

Maybe that is the only drugstore in the area. He is the governor of California and shouldn't base decisions on what other states are doing.

— Lynda Goddard,

Redondo Beach

Fake Fox News

How ironic that the paper's March 8 front page story about Rupert Murdoch, “Fox chair says 2020 election not stolen,” and the paper's editorial “Dominion lawsuit puts focus on bad journalism” should appear on the same day.

Was that planned or was it a coincidence?

Dominion's $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News has revealed troubling details about the station's celebrity hosts and their relentless lies about Donald Trump and his unproven claims of election fraud.

I don't know if those lies led to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, as some have speculated, but I do know this: they didn't just tarnish journalism; they came close to

We need more nuclear and hydro-electric power in the state of California

Re “Nuclear power should remain on the table” (March 9):

When the state finally realized that we need more power and wisely requested the federal regulators to continue the Diablo Canyon nuclear power production for some time, the feds have complied but that is far from enough to solve our dilemma. This is a step in the right direction but needs to be augmented by new nuclear facilities that eliminate radioactive waste. Several bills were introduced late last legislative year to start this process, but were stalled in committee.

Time for the Legislature to start this process again and get it through the process this time. We also need to reactivate the San Onofre plant after fixing the generator problems. Another step in the right direction would be to ignore the environmentalists who have stopped the creation of new dams and repairing old ones that can produce muchneeded power for our often inadequately met electricity needs.

The need has been exemplified by the brownouts and blackouts in the last three years and more.

— Hayden Lening,

Claremont