TOC Opens an Office in Washington D.C.

On June 5, The Objectivist Center held a reception at the Phoenix Park Hotel, near the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the opening of its Washington office, which is headed by Edward L. Hudgins. Several staff members of TOC joined Hudgins for the event, including: Executive Director David Kelley; Director of Administration Jamie Dorrian; Director of The Atlas Society Robert Bidinotto (who also works out of Washington); Navigator Editor Roger Donway; and Patrick Stephens, TOC's manager of current affairs. Among the 170 guests who attended the gala event were two members of Congress, several journalists, numerous representatives of the pro-capitalist think tanks that operate in and around Washington, and many members of TOC. Literally as well as ideologically, the crowd was shoulder-to-shoulder.

Among the many think tanks represented at the reception were the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Reason Foundation, the Institute for Justice, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Citizens Against Government Waste, U.S. Term Limits, and the Center for Educational Freedom. Representing the media were journalists from the Washington Times and Insight magazines, as well as CNSNews. The day before the reception, David Kelley, Ed Hudgins, and Robert Bidinotto spent nearly two hours at the Washington Times being interviewed by members of the paper's editorial staff.

An Unexpected Endorsement

The opening remarks of the evening were offered by Representative Bob Barr (Republican of Georgia), which came as something of a surprise to the audience inasmuch as he had not been listed on the invitation. The explanation is that Barr had read about the reception in the Washington Times and called Hudgins to say that, even though he had another event that night, he wanted to stop by and welcome TOC, an offer that was accepted with great pleasure. The scheduled speakers deferred to Representative Barr so that he could greet TOC and still keep his later appointment.

In his greeting, Barr observed that Ayn Rand had a deep appreciation for an often-forgotten and too-little-noticed foundation of a free society: the right to privacy. Without privacy, Barr maintained, the other rights of a free society could not survive, for "as the sphere of privacy shrinks ever smaller, the sphere of government power necessarily grows larger." And the process is rarely reversed; freedom, once gone, is usually gone for good. That is why, Barr said, we must guard so zealously the little privacy we have left.

In conclusion, Barr said that TOC's physical presence in Washington, combined with its firm principles, would add measurably to the quality of the policy debates and to the education of others, especially members of Congress, on issues of freedom. "The issues," he observed, "are becoming even more difficult as we engage in this headlong rush for security, either perceived or real." The next few years, he predicted, will be critical in determining whether Americans will have any privacy at all during the rest of this century, and for that reason he welcomed TOC's timely decision to engage in the battle.

Explaining the Center's Program

Taking up his master-of-ceremonies role, Edward Hudgins next took to the podium and observed that Ayn Rand "was one of the great advocates of the principle that liberty is based on the moral premise that each individual has a right to his or her own life. Because we are creatures with a rational capacity and free will, our survival and well-being depend on our exercising the virtues of rationality, integrity, productivity, and justice, and on our taking personal responsibility for our own lives."

But, he mused, "Washington is a city with a serious deficit of rationality and integrity; it does not produce goods and services but laws and regulations that usually hinder the production of goods and services and punish productivity; and generally the policies that come out of this town are anything but just." For that reason, he said, "The Objectivist Center has opened this office in the nation's capital to bring a new and vital moral voice to the debate about public policy." To that end, Hudgins said, the Washington office will host various policy forums, and he noted, "I am especially eager to do a forum on the values and virtues of business, in order to provide moral ammunition to entrepreneurs, so that they will stop apologizing for creating the richest nation in the world."

TOC's executive director, David Kelley, spoke next, offering that "TOC's core mission is to bring the ideas expounded by Rand to a wider public and to promote a new Enlightenment culture of reason, individualism, respect for achievement, and individual liberty." TOC, he said, believes that it can bring to Washington a focus on the moral foundations of freedom and the moral ideal of freedom. "We would like to see a day in which we have not only a strong economic case for the freedom of producers but a moral case. We would like to see a day when egalitarianism no longer holds the moral high ground and we can proudly defend those who are successful as deserving of recognition and reward. We would like to see a day when each individual can say that he has a moral right to live his life as he chooses."

Robert Bidinotto, the director of the Atlas Society, discussed the cultural foundations of a free society, noting the need for such values as integrity, self-reliance, and self-responsibility. "One cannot imagine a society filled with dependent-minded individuals, those with the victim perspective, being hospitable to freedom," he observed, adding that people who feel hopeless and helpless, with a pessimistic worldview, want to be taken care of. This worldview, Bidinotto explained, is today re-enforced by most "serious" art, which presents a tragic universe, where life is fundamentally flawed and happiness is either impossible or superficial.

By contrast, Bidinotto said, Ayn Rand extolled—and demonstrated—the principles of rational individualism, productive action, and the pursuit of happiness; she was both a romantic and a realist, with a vision of heroic enterprises and happy endings. The Atlas Society, he stated, seeks to promulgate the vision of Rand's fiction, to introduce that vision to more people, and to bring together people who already share it, so that they may understand more deeply the philosophy behind it.

Representative Ed Royce Welcomes TOC

Hudgins, returning to the podium, next told the crowd that he had first met Representative Ed Royce (Republican of California) in 1992, when Royce was newly elected to the House. At that time, Royce described his philosophical background as starting with H.L. Mencken, then moving on to F.A. Hayek and Ayn Rand. "That was all it took," Hudgins said, "to make him my kind of guy." Hudgins noted that Royce consistently gets high marks from groups like Citizens Against Government Waste and the National Taxpayers Union for voting against pork-barrel spending and tax hikes. Moreover, as chairman of the House International Relations Committee's subcommittee on Africa, he has always appreciated that the poverty of that continent is caused by a lack of political and economic freedom.

In his talk, Royce said that he agreed with Rand's book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and with arguments made by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan that the chief cause of our political problems today is the failure of defenders of freedom to explain to people with a collectivist mindset the moral values that are the motive-power behind capitalism. The economic argument for capitalism, he said, has been won, and the programs of the Left are seen as bankrupt. But the moral case for capitalism remains to be made. "So, I want to express my appreciation to you for your bringing Ed Hudgins on, because he was the one who put forward for us, during the Contract with America, the moral ammunition we needed to carry our points on a couple of issues, such as welfare reform."

One way to make the moral case, Royce pointed out, is by showing that the moral is the practical. Thus, Royce noted that many of his colleagues had not foreseen the collapse of the Soviet Union, because they considered the matter merely in a political and economic light. By contrast, Rand showed that that immoral system was against man's nature, could not stand over the long term, and would collapse under its own weight—if the West did not prop it up with aid and trade. He urged Objectivists to tell the next generation of Rand's prescience in this matter and, most importantly, to use that example to build the case for a moral defense of capitalism. Fortunately, according to Royce, the next generation is already showing its openness to Rand's ideas, for in his experience, three out of four interns coming into Republican ranks on Capitol Hill got interested in politics because of Ayn Rand.

Smith Calls Hudgins the Anti-Mouch

Fred Smith, the founder and president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, applauded TOC's decision to bring its ideas and ideals to Washington, and noted that he did not make such a statement lightly, given the track record of groups who set up in Washington with the intention of doing good. Indeed, he said, holding up a copy of Atlas Shrugged with some hundred page markers hanging off its dog-eared pages, "Rand understood well the political process and the risk of being an activist here." He then quoted from Atlas a passage in which the relationship of business and politics is discussed through the eyes of the great industrialist Hank Rearden:

Rearden disliked the subject. He knew that it was necessary to have a man to protect him from the legislature; all industrialists had to employ such men. But he had never given much attention to this aspect of his business; he could not quite convince himself that it was necessary. An inexplicable kind of distaste, part fastidiousness, part boredom, stopped him whenever he tried to consider it.

Of course, Rearden does need a man in Washington. Smith noted that the efforts of opponents to have Rearden Metal banned as a hazard to public health echo today's environmental extremists. And he pointed out that legislation Ayn Rand described in Atlas Shrugged, forbidding any person or corporation from owning more than one business concern in a given field, is very much like today's antitrust laws.

But Rearden's man in Washington is Wesley Mouch. "Wesley Mouch," said Smith, savoring the very sound of the name. "Has there ever been a better characterization of a Washington lobbyist than Wesley Mouch?" Continuing the parallels between Atlas Shrugged and present-day Washington, Smith read a passage about a clandestine meeting between Mouch and Rearden competitor Orren Boyle, who receives government subsidies and complains that he is still losing out to Rearden: "'We've got the most modern plant in the country and the best organization. That seems to me an indisputable fact, because we got the Industrial Efficiency Award of Globe Magazine last year. So we can maintain that we've done our best and nobody can blame us,' Boyle says. Rearden's man in Washington listens sympathetically and soon enough sells out Rearden's interests in order to gain power. Washington may be a swamp to Hank, but it's a hot tub to Wesley Mouch."

The moral, Smith opined, is that "the Hank Reardens of the world should not come to Washington; they are much too valuable in the real world. But they will not win their battle in Washington unassisted. And they sure as Hell should not employ Mouch to win it." What they need, rather, is the right kind of "man in Washington." In that light, he observed, "TOC has chosen well to join the fray." Noting his long acquaintance with Ed Hudgins, Smith paraphrased the words of one famous politician: "Let me say that I know Wesley Mouch—indeed, I meet him almost every day in almost every meeting I attend here in Washington. I know Wesley Mouch, and let me tell you one thing, Ed Hudgins: You're no Wesley Mouch! Thank God!"