UM Coke Protest

Below is an LTE I sent to the Detroit Free Press.

I take issue with your editorial "Coke Stand" of Jan 7th 2006 in which you praised the University of Michigan (UofM) for refusing to carry Coke products on campus as a protest against some alledged social responsibility violations by Coke in India and Colombia.

Uof M has the right to associate with whomever and for whatever reasons it wants. My objection is with the university teaching its students the marxist concept of "social responsibility." UofM is teaching its students that the individual must be subordinated to "society."

Adolf Hitler once said: "You are nothing, your race is everything." UofM is merely substituting its collective-society-for Hitler's collective-the German race. If UofM students had said they were protesting Coke's violation of the individual rights of people, and had evidence of same, I would support that effort 100%. UofM students need to reject collective thinking.

I don't know if the freep will print it, but their left leaning editorial page has been known to print disenting views. But the point I was trying to make is that our country was not founded on the principle of sacrificing the individual to any collective.

Hitler wanted the individual sacrificed to "The Fatherland" (German race); Stalin sacrificed the individual to the "Proletariet"; Mao to the "Peoples Revolution."

It doesn't matter what collective the individual was sacrificed to. He was still sacrificed. Our founders said No, there will be no more sacrificing of the individual. The individual is sovereign. He has the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

By teaching today's kids notions like "social responsibility" our University professors are teaching them that the collective (society) is sovereign, not the individual. This will of course, destroy the concept individual rights in the minds of the next generation or, to be more precise, make their minds incapable of understanding the concept of individual rights. They will become good, obedient servants of the state, the state being the voice and protector of "society."

The technique used by intellectuals to destroy individual rights in the minds of students can best be seen in a paraphrasing of a scene in Ayn Rand's novel "The Fountainhead" where villian Ellsworth Toohey is explaining to Peter Keating some of the techniques he used in his rise to power: "Want to destroy individual rights Peter? Don't attack individual rights. Move the concept away from the individual by inventing some collective rights like "civil rights", "human rights," or "minority rights" and invent some phoney rights to things like a job or health care. Enshrine these. You have destroyed individual rights. See how easy it is Peter?"

Naturally those are not Ms. Rand's words. They are mine but she identified the technique and the structure of the deception. What is needed is more university professors who are pro-individual rights. That will take awhile. But things are looking up. I say that because the left is devoid of ideas. Voters will respond to ideas and right now those who advocate laissez-faire capitalism are the only ones with ideas.