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“Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence”

April 7, 2009 by Jeff Scialabba

Frustrated Americans around the country are gearing up for another round of grassroots “tea parties” on Tax Day, April 15. Up to this point, it is unclear whether the loosely-connected protests will amount to anything other than a fleeting backlash against an onslaught of government intervention. What unites the protesters is not a consistent intellectual outlook–they appear to hold a hodgepodge of viewpoints–but rather their anger at the alarming expansion of our government. To have real impact, they’ll need a consistent intellectual framework.

Although the Tea Party name adopted by the protesters evokes images of the American Revolution, there is, at present, no basis for comparison. The American Revolution was fundamentally an intellectual movement–a revolt against the anti-freedom ideas motivating Britain’s treatment of the colonists, and, most importantly, a revolt for the idea of individual rights. These radical new ideas about what government should and should not consist of were enshrined by America’s Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence, and were the motivating force behind the revolt.

If today’s tea party protesters intend to spark any significant change, they need to understand that ideas drive change, and they need to advocate the right ideas. Both of these points are addressed in Onkar Ghate’s video presentation, “Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence.”

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