Self-Responsible

 

I get a online free memo/email from The Atlas Socieit and, one of their senior scholars, Richard Salsman covered subjects mentioned below for them on an online webinar on 5/28/24. This short paragraph from that email discusses Salsman’s main ideas which I would like to comment on.

 

 

“

Morals & Markets Presents:

Paternalism, Infantilism & the Welfare State

Join Atlas Society Senior Scholar Richard Salsman, Ph.D., Tuesday, May 28 @ 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET for our quarterly Morals & Markets webinar. This month, Dr. Salsman covers paternalism, infantilism, and the welfare state:

 

"A free society depends not only on rational philosophy, capitalist economics, and rights-respecting politics but a psychology of mental health rooted in self-esteem and its corollaries (self-confidence, self-responsibility, self-reliance). Many people are anxious, angry, and even phobic about living in a free, vibrant, dynamic culture. Preferring security to liberty, they lose both." — Richard Salsman, Ph.D.

 

My response: A free society does depend on rational philosophy, capitalist economics, and rights-respecting politics; it sounds like his political philosophy is compatible with classical British liberalism and the views of America’s Founders.

Salsman like all Randians is an egoist and claims that a free society requires a psychology of mental health rooted ins elf-esteem and its corollaries, self-confidence, self-responsibility, and self-reliance. Notice that Salsman challenges the young to be self-confident and of high self-esteem, but he couples these good self-feelings with the requirement that each person must rely on himself and is responsible for what he does and does not do, and that does not sound very selfish and short-sighted to me.

 

He also welcomes those with courage and zest for life that are willing to risk living in a vibrant, free, dynamic culture, which they must face and handle if America is to remain free and secure.