Today I celebrated Independence Day by reading the Declaration of Independence and some pages of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Anyone who wonders about the connection is invited to read the right-hand column of the home page of this blog.

Second Renaissance Books once published a tear-off calendar, “Ayn Rand Quote of the Day • 1995.” Here is the entry for July 4:

The most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States of America was the subordination of society to moral law.

The principle of man’s individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system—as a limitation on the power of the state, as man’s protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first moral society in history. —The Virtue of Selfishness

{Rand [1963] 1964, 93.}

Reference:
Rand, Ayn ([1963] 1964), “Man’s Rights”, The Objectivist Newsletter 2(4): 13–14, 16. Reprinted in The Virtue of Selfishness, New York: Signet, 92–100.