 Happy fourth. It's a bit of a sad fourth though. It's a sad fourth because there's a tea party going on. You know, we had a tea party once. Boston had a tea party once. It should have been the last time this country had a scene of tea party. Because as a consequence of that tea party, this country, the greatest country in the history of man, was created. That should have been it. We should need this. This is tragic. This is sad. And we should be angry about the fact that we need a tea party today. And you should be angry. And you should be angry about the, you know, the attempts to socialize healthcare and turn our doctors into slaves and you into, you know, into numbers that are stand in line for your, you know, for your healthcare. You should be angry at the largest tax increase in American history that cap and trade is going to entail. You should be angry at the fact that our politicians, Democrats, Republicans, all consider you just a resource to suck up in order to, you know, promote their agenda and their power and their socialist policies today. You should be pissed off. You should be angry. That there is no alternative to Obama. Because you know what, if McCain had got elected country first, that's an American slogan, give me a break. You should be upset because there's nobody out there in politics today that represents what this country is really about. There's nothing. There's nobody. If you want healthcare reform, I'm all for healthcare reform, let's privatize healthcare. You know that 50% of all dollars spent on healthcare today are spent by government? Well, there's the reform. Get rid of those 50%. Get, phase out Medicare. Phase out Medicare. You know, bring about real private medicine. That's reform. You should be upset because Obama doesn't represent change. What change? Right? Bush started by privatizing, by nationalizing the auto industry and Obama completed the task. Bush bailed out the banks and Obama just continued that trend. Bush did a little bit of stimulus packages and Obama did big stimulus packages. But there's no change. This is just one continuous movement towards more and more statism. Less and less of what we just heard America represents. Less and less of your rights, fewer and fewer individual rights. So the question, the question that's really important for us to ask and to try to understand is how did we get to this point? How did we get from that original tea party that resulted in the creation of the greatest country in history, the only mall country in history, to the point today where, you know, we're going to look like Europe really soon, where our rights are being violated far more today than they were by the King of England back then. After all, they were rebelling against a tea tax. Think of all the tea taxes you paid today. How did we get from the founding of this country, from an understanding of what individual rights really meant, to the kind of nonsense that Dr. Lewis was talking about in terms of individual rights as whims as whatever I feel like? How did this country get to be such a mess that it is today? And I would argue that the answer to that is in Alashrug. You see a lot of signs out here for Alashrug. Go read it. The answer to that is not in politics. The answer to that is not a question of Republicans or Democrats. The answer to that is that this country has moved a long way in the kind of ethics and the kind of morality that we accept. We today accept as a culture, as a country, Democrats, Republicans, all that we are our neighbors' keepers. That if our neighbor doesn't have health care, well, we need to solve that problem. Why? That if our neighbors aren't responsible enough to say for his assignment, you're morally obligated to solve his problem. It's called Social Security. If our neighbor is unemployed, you're morally responsible to pay him something called unemployment insurance or to find him a job. It's called the stimulus package. If your neighbor can't pay for his mortgage, you're morally responsible to pay it for him. The morality that dominates the country today is a morality that places the well-being of others, of your neighbor, of your community, of your strangers all around you as your primary moral purpose. Your primary moral purpose is to serve others. That slavery, that servitude, that is what this country will build, that notion is what this country will build against. You have an inalienable right to what? To pursue your happiness. Not your neighbor's happiness, not the state's happiness, not the community's happiness, whatever the hell that means. Your happiness. This country implicitly was founded on a principle, a moral principle. A moral principle that says that you own your own life, that your moral responsibility is to yourself. That you should be making the most out of your life, make your life the best that it can be. And let your neighbor worry about his life, because if we place them around you of other people above our own, if the public interest is the primary, if selfishness and self-interest are perceived as vices and negative attributes, then hey, socialism is ideal, right? It's geared towards helping everybody out, taking care of your neighbor, taking care of strangers, taking care of irresponsible people. You know, why not? You've got them all obligations to do it. The government's just helping you along. You know, one of the guys working in an Obama campaign wrote a book called Nudge. All the government's doing is nudging you to do the right thing. This Tea Party and the Tea Party movement or the Tea Parties that are happening all over the country are going to mean something. We need these Tea Parties to represent something different than the status quo. It's not about complaining about Obama or complaining about Bush. What we need is a new revolution, a Mao Revolution. What we need is a revolution that replaces this otherism, that replaces this idea that you have a Mao obligation to your neighbor, that you are your neighbor's keeper somehow. We need to dump that in the river with the tea. But we need to replace it with something positive. We need to replace it with the notion that your Mao responsibility is for yourself. To rationally pursue your life to the best of your ability. To make the most out of the life that you have on this earth. To be, to use a cliche, the best that you can be. Now, that's America. That's what America's about. That shouldn't be that hard. But that's going to require, even in America, a real revolution. We need an intellectual revolution for self-interest. We need an intellectual revolution to defend self-interest. Because once you're self-interested, if each one of you believes that you have a Mao obligation to yourself to pursue your own life, then individual rights is just a political manifestation of that. All that means is the government should back away and leave you alone to do what is Mao, what is right. So if you want the government out of your bag, if you want to fight for individual rights, and we all need to fight for individual rights as our primate political principle, then you need to fight for self-interest. You need to fight for a new morality. The Boston Tea Party 233, or actually more, 235 years ago, was the beginning of an intellectual revolution. A revolution that brought to the forefront the concept of individual rights and allowed for the creation of the first country in the history of man that defended, that was based on the principle of individual rights. Let's make these tea parties the beginning of the next American revolution. The American revolution that plays the foundation, the Mao foundation, for the kind of revolution the founding fathers had and that we all still benefit from by living in this country. Let's make this revolution meaningful by making it an intellectual revolution. Let's have a positive message coming out of these tea parties. A message on principle, that on principle stands for individual rights, that doesn't compromise on individual rights, that doesn't compromise on the Mao point, on self-interest, that doesn't whitewash it, that doesn't accept any kind of partial solutions, that wants it all, that stays consistent, that is on principle. You know, when Patrick Henry said give me liberty or give me death, he didn't mean a little bit of liberty. He didn't mean a compromise with the king just on some issues, health care maybe, right? I'll do cap and trade, you give me health care or an aquarium or whatever it was. He meant give me liberty or give me death. Where are those principled advocates for liberty today? So I call on all of you to use this Fourth of July, I think the greatest holiday in the world, use this Fourth of July to commit yourself, commit yourself to becoming principled advocates for liberty, commit yourself to becoming principled advocates for individual rights, but most importantly commit yourself to making the most out of your life for being the best that you can be in your life and for spreading that idea. The idea of rational self-interest, the idea that you own your life and you are no slave to anybody, not your neighbors, not your community, not the state and not country either. With that kind of commitment, we all agree to commit to that. We have a chance of changing this country. The ideas that are articulated in the last two talks, ideas that I articulated today are American ideas written by a Russian author, but in American, these are American ideas. This philosophy is an American philosophy. Let's take it to the American people, let's take these ideas to the American people and let's reclaim this country for what it really stands for in the name of the founding fathers who gave us this enormous gift. Happy Independence Day.