Rights and minorities: Why the Tea Party Needs Ayn Rand

"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." Ayn Rand

The statists in the Tea Party movement were screaming yesterday that the rights of gay people should be decided by the majority of the public. These are the same people who pretend to adore Rand. They pretend even more to read her books. And, a few of them, even pretend they understand her books. Clearly they not.

Meanwhile the Religious Left is mounting a campaign, along with bigoted fundamentalists like Chuck Colson, to attack Rand for not believing in the Sky Man with Magic Powers. They say Rand would have a "bad" influence on the morons in the Tea Party. But, certainly, when it comes to issues like subjecting the rights of minorities to a public vote, would the world be more civilized if they ACTUALLY PAID ATTENTION to Rand.

The Tea Party movement goes bad because it allows the "Bible-based" policies to take precedent over any of the little Rand they read, that the much less of Rand that they understand. Certainly when it comes to social freedoms the more Rand the Tea Party followed, the better.

Let's put it to a vote.

A cute commercial from Ireland about the absurdity of putting the rights of people to a public vote.

Hey dude, majority rules.

Here is an amusing video that depicts the dangers of allowing individual rights to be subjected to repeal by majority vote. I find it bizarre that conservatives, who used to whine "This is a republic not a democracy" appealing to majority rule. Thomas Jefferson warned us of these dangers, unfortunately the Progressive Left in California wanted popular votes to be superior to individual liberty and this year gays were the victims of that bad idea. Here are some of Jefferson's comments on the topic.

"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816.

"The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens." --Thomas Jefferson: Note in Destutt de Tracy, "Political Economy,"

"[The] best principles [of our republic] secure to all its citizens a perfect equality of rights." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to the Citizens of Wilmington, 1809.

"What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789.

"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819.

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Gilmer, 1816.

"The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to