Anthemism: the abandonment of efforts to reform statist countries in favor of founding a sovereign laissez-faire capitalist state consistent with Objectivism
The excerpt below is from To Begin the World Over Again, a booklet published by the Thomas Paine Institute (TPI) on September 19, 2025. It is the opening portion of…
Many who consider themselves reasonable hold that a terrible thing happened during the Biden years: the handling of the Texas border. Of the total migrants coming through this border, about…
The playwright Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969, largely because of his play Waiting for Godot (pronounced “Goh-doh,” with a silent “t”). Its plot follows two…
The goal is not to create a small micro-state or experimental enclave, but to found a full-scale country capable of becoming home to millions of people. Countries are not created in a single declaration — they emerge through a series of political, financial, demographic, and institutional stages. We must learn from previous successes — the United States and Israel.
Stage 1 - Building Relationships and Political Awareness
The first stage is networking — establishing connections with influential politicians, diplomats, business leaders, and intellectuals, and telling them about Anthemism and its goals. The search should focus on territory with the potential to become a real country — land capable of eventually supporting at least 10 million people, not a symbolic micro-enclave. The purpose is building credibility, awareness, and trust.
Parallels with Zionism: Theodor Herzl spends years building relationships with rulers, diplomats, and influential figures — the Ottoman Sultan, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain, Jewish financiers in London and Vienna. Chaim Weizmann does the same with British leaders — …
Parallels with Zionism: Theodor Herzl spends years building relationships with rulers, diplomats, and influential figures — the Ottoman Sultan, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain, Jewish financiers in London and Vienna. Chaim Weizmann does the same with British leaders — Balfour, Lloyd George, Churchill — but many connections come through scientific credibility, not diplomacy alone. From 1904 he works as a chemist at the University of Manchester, building a network among Ernest Rutherford, William Perkin, and Samuel Alexander. During the First World War his fermentation process produces acetone for British cordite — Churchill, then at the Admiralty, summons him and asks for thirty thousand tons. That reputation gives him standing to press the Zionist case with the politicians who matter.
Stage 2 - Securing a Political Framework
Campaigning to obtain agreements establishes a chartered autonomous territory under existing sovereign states — a political pathway toward a future country on territory large enough to support millions of people. The territory is disputed by at least two governments or international actors who could not resolve the conflict. The future country neutralizes that conflict; the charter holds because no side can change its mind on a whim.
Parallels with Zionism: In Palestine, only the Ottoman Empire held a claim — with no second actor to balance the bargain, Herzl fails to obtain a charter. The Ottoman Empire is bankrupt — crushed by public debt owed to European powers — and his offer to the Sultan is loan terms on the order of twenty to …
Parallels with Zionism: In Palestine, only the Ottoman Empire held a claim — with no second actor to balance the bargain, Herzl fails to obtain a charter. The Ottoman Empire is bankrupt — crushed by public debt owed to European powers — and his offer to the Sultan is loan terms on the order of twenty to thirty million pounds through Jewish financiers, consolidating that debt on favorable enough terms to rescue the empire from European creditors, in exchange for mass Jewish immigration to Palestine, with settlers helping repay the loan through taxes; the Sultan refuses to link debt relief to Palestine and offers the vilayet of Mosul instead — a distant frontier province where British and Russian interests already overlapped. Herzl also explored Al-Arish west of Gaza on the Egypt side and secured British papers for East Africa — the so-called Uganda plan, though the territory lay in present-day Kenya. Weizmann cultivates relationships across the British circle — Balfour, Lloyd George, C.P. Scott, Herbert Samuel, Mark Sykes, and the Rothschilds — from their first meetings in 1906 onward, arguing that if Palestine falls under British influence, Jewish immigration can develop it and secure the route to Egypt. At tea in 1915 Balfour jokes that after the guns stop firing they might yet get Jerusalem. Britain issues the Balfour Declaration; the League of Nations assigns Britain the Palestine Mandate — territory that also interests the French and the Arabs, so Britain cannot change its mind on a whim.
Stage 3 - Securing Founding Capital
Once a political framework exists, the project becomes investable. Now founding capital is assembled from entrepreneurs, long-term investors, philanthropists, and institutions — broadly distributed rather than dependent on a single patron. Together, the first three stages are expected to take approximately 10–20 years.
Parallels with Zionism: Herzl works to secure from Jewish bankers loan terms for the bankrupt Ottoman Empire — twenty to thirty million pounds to consolidate its debt to European powers — which he offers the Sultan in exchange for a Palestine charter and mass Jewish immigration; the Sultan refuses Palestine and …
Parallels with Zionism: Herzl works to secure from Jewish bankers loan terms for the bankrupt Ottoman Empire — twenty to thirty million pounds to consolidate its debt to European powers — which he offers the Sultan in exchange for a Palestine charter and mass Jewish immigration; the Sultan refuses Palestine and proposes the vilayet of Mosul instead, and Herzl rejects that counter-offer; the same bankers who would float the loan help him found the Jewish Colonial Trust through colleagues such as David Wolffsohn — he holds no personal stake in it — and arrange letters of credit and subscription deposits in London, placing an advance payment for mining concessions in a bank as the Sultan’s officials request, to prove to the Sultan that the funds are real. He launches the Jewish National Fund at the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901, mobilizing mass fundraising through blue boxes placed in Jewish homes across the diaspora; the pennies buy land in Palestine. Weizmann leads fundraising tours across America for the United Palestine Appeal, negotiating for years with Louis Marshall, Felix Warburg, and other non-Zionist leaders to bring them into a shared framework. In 1929 he helps establish the enlarged Jewish Agency — mandated under the Palestine Mandate — which channels diaspora money into immigration, land purchase, and building the Jewish community in Palestine. On the eve of independence in 1948, Golda Meir tours America for the Jewish Agency — a speech in Chicago and weeks of city-to-city appeals raise some ninety million dollars across two tours, funding arms and supplies for the war of independence.
Stage 4 - Operating Chartered Territory
The next phase is the transition from preparation to operation. The chartered territory begins operating under the sovereignty or protection of existing states, with daily administration delegated to a charter organization. Early pioneers arrive, existing residents are integrated as partners, and founding capital supports security, essential services, and initial infrastructure. Remote work and corporate partnerships help build an early economy.
Parallels with Zionism: Under the British Mandate, pioneers built the Histadrut, the Haganah, and settlements while Britain retained sovereignty — a useful example of pre-state institution-building on chartered territory, though the Histadrut itself was misguided because it was socialist. Golda Meir arrives …
Parallels with Zionism: Under the British Mandate, pioneers built the Histadrut, the Haganah, and settlements while Britain retained sovereignty — a useful example of pre-state institution-building on chartered territory, though the Histadrut itself was misguided because it was socialist. Golda Meir arrives in 1921 and joins Ben-Gurion’s Second Aliyah circle; kibbutz Merhavia first rejects her and Morris as spoiled Americans, Morris contracts malaria, and they leave for poverty in Jerusalem. Weizmann sees robust settlers in the new kibbutzim — yet also sketchy meals, hidden hardships, and communes that still cannot feed themselves from their own produce. Pogroms at Nebi Musa (1920), Jaffa (1921), and 1929 — nearly a hundred and fifty Jews killed — spread alongside attacks on fields and settlements while the Palestine administration mixes indifference and hostility, amnesties riot instigators, punishes Jewish defenders, and Mandate officers carry antisemitic literature such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Weizmann works diplomatically with the Old Yishuv — orthodox Chalukkah Jews who predated Zionism — assuring rabbis that the Zionist Commission does not threaten their observance.
Stage 5 - Mass Immigration and Population Growth
After the pioneer phase demonstrates success, the focus shifts toward rapid but sustainable population growth, supported by housing, infrastructure, employment, and essential services. Immigration remains managed under the charter framework. By the end of this stage, the population is large enough that reversing the process becomes politically and economically difficult.
Parallels with Zionism: Herzl rejected philanthropic colonization by Baron Maurice de Hirsch and Baron Edmond de Rothschild; in Der Judenstaat he sought mass immigration under sovereign rights — the legal charter from the Ottoman Sultan. Golda Meir writes in My Life that the socialist Histadrut led …
Parallels with Zionism: Herzl rejected philanthropic colonization by Baron Maurice de Hirsch and Baron Edmond de Rothschild; in Der Judenstaat he sought mass immigration under sovereign rights — the legal charter from the Ottoman Sultan. Golda Meir writes in My Life that the socialist Histadrut led absorption while Palestine lacked a ready-made economy; capitalism would have worked far better. In the Fifth Aliyah (1929–1939) some quarter of a million Jews arrive, many fleeing Nazi Germany; the Yishuv reaches some four hundred thousand by the late 1930s. Britain’s 1939 White Paper caps legal immigration at seventy-five thousand over five years and closes Palestine to Jews fleeing Europe; refugees crowd onto illegal coffin boats — unseaworthy ships that sink or are turned back.
Parallels with United States: Through most of the nineteenth century America kept immigration largely open — tens of millions arrived through ports such as Ellis Island; Emma Lazarus's The New Colossus (1883) expresses the same spirit on the Statue of Liberty. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act barred nearly …
Parallels with United States: Through most of the nineteenth century America kept immigration largely open — tens of millions arrived through ports such as Ellis Island; Emma Lazarus’s The New Colossus (1883) expresses the same spirit on the Statue of Liberty. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act barred nearly all Chinese workers — the first major federal restriction, amid cries that Chinese were “taking our jobs.” The Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) imposed national-origins quotas that slashed arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe and barred Asian immigration; Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race influenced the law — Adolf Hitler later called it his “bible.” Ronald Reagan’s farewell address in January 1989 spoke in favor of immigration, describing America as a shining city that should keep its doors open.
Stage 6 - Autonomous Prototype State
The chartered territory becomes a functioning political community with courts, representative institutions, and its own defense, while sovereignty remains with the suzerain. Free trade, open borders, and strong individual rights may strain neighboring governments. This may be the hardest stage: building population for independence while the suzerain can still undo the project.
Parallels with Zionism: During the British Mandate there is no Israel yet — only the Yishuv, practical autonomy under British sovereignty. Golda Meir writes in My Life that the Histadrut became "the vanguard of a state-in-the-making"; the Jewish Agency and Vaad Leumi run immigration, welfare, and …
Parallels with Zionism: During the British Mandate there is no Israel yet — only the Yishuv, practical autonomy under British sovereignty. Golda Meir writes in My Life that the Histadrut became “the vanguard of a state-in-the-making”; the Jewish Agency and Vaad Leumi run immigration, welfare, and defense. The Yishuv seeks to fight the Nazis with the Allies; Weizmann campaigns for a Jewish fighting force — Churchill agrees in September 1940, but the War Office delays four years and keeps most volunteers in non-combat roles. Some thirty thousand Palestinian Jews serve in British forces; more than seven hundred are killed. Only in September 1944 is the Jewish Brigade formed — five thousand men under a Zionist flag, fighting in Italy in 1945. Weizmann founds the Jewish Agency in August 1929 — answered by pogroms killing nearly a hundred and fifty Jews; the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini leads Arab violence with an indifferent or hostile administration. Balfour opens the Hebrew University (1925); Weizmann founds the Daniel Sieff Institute at Rehovoth (1934), ancestor of the Weizmann Institute. The Arab revolt of 1936–1939 kills dozens of Jews while Britain appeases the Mufti; the Yishuv follows Havlagah through the Haganah. Jabotinsky’s Revisionists break with Weizmann; the Irgun bombs the King David Hotel (1946) — Weizmann condemns Jewish terror. On Black Saturday, 29 June 1946, Operation Agatha arrests Sharett and much of the Agency Executive; Golda Meir, spared arrest, becomes acting head of the Political Department while British soldiers occupy Agency headquarters.
Stage 7 - Sovereignty
The population is large enough to field its own military — the country declares sovereignty, prepared to defend itself. Borders are open — anyone may live and work, no visa required — but citizenship is not automatic; conditions partly block newcomers with bad political ideas from voting the country into statism.
Parallels with Zionism: The UN partition vote of 29 November 1947 set off fighting between the Yishuv and Palestinian Arabs — the Haganah against Arab militias and the Arab Liberation Army — while Britain withdrew. Independence on 14 May 1948; Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq invaded on 15 May. …
Parallels with Zionism: The UN partition vote of 29 November 1947 set off fighting between the Yishuv and Palestinian Arabs — the Haganah against Arab militias and the Arab Liberation Army — while Britain withdrew. Independence on 14 May 1948; Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq invaded on 15 May. The 1948 war had two phases — communal war before sovereignty, interstate war after — and survival depended on the army and institutions the Yishuv had built under British rule.
Parallels with United States: The Revolutionary War began in 1775 at Lexington and Concord — before the Declaration on 4 July 1776. Britain invaded; recognition came in the Treaty of Paris (1783). The weak Articles of Confederation (1781) were replaced by the Constitution (1789). The *Mexican-American …
Parallels with United States: The Revolutionary War began in 1775 at Lexington and Concord — before the Declaration on 4 July 1776. Britain invaded; recognition came in the Treaty of Paris (1783). The weak Articles of Confederation (1781) were replaced by the Constitution (1789). The Mexican-American War (1846–1848) and Civil War (1861–1865) tested sovereignty again. Through much of the 19th century America was laissez-faire; then Kant, pragmatism, and Progressivism reshaped politics toward collectivism. Rand argued in For the New Intellectual that this drove statism — the income tax (1913), welfare, erosion of laissez-faire — and in The Comprachicos that Dewey’s schools subordinated learning to social adjustment. Immigration restrictions tightened in the same era.
Stage 8 - Beacon of Freedom for the World
The final stage — the country is a successful example of individual rights, freedom, and laissez-faire capitalism — a beacon of freedom for the world. People immigrate until the population reaches its maximal size.
Parallels with Zionism: Israel earns Startup Nation — second only to Silicon Valley. Netafim turned desert into farmland with drip irrigation; Teva Pharmaceuticals serves roughly 200 million patients daily. Waze, Mobileye, Check Point, and Iron Dome are global names. Arab citizens share that …
Parallels with Zionism: Israel earns Startup Nation — second only to Silicon Valley. Netafim turned desert into farmland with drip irrigation; Teva Pharmaceuticals serves roughly 200 million patients daily. Waze, Mobileye, Check Point, and Iron Dome are global names. Arab citizens share that liberty — more than in any neighboring country.
Parallels with United States:Apollo 11 reached the Moon in 1969; SpaceX, Google, Amazon, Apple, NVIDIA, OpenAI, and others lead today. The lineage runs from Edison and Tesla to Rockefeller; Lincoln, the women's rights movement, and Martin Luther King extended liberty; America has the …
Parallels with United States:Apollo 11 reached the Moon in 1969; SpaceX, Google, Amazon, Apple, NVIDIA, OpenAI, and others lead today. The lineage runs from Edison and Tesla to Rockefeller; Lincoln, the women’s rights movement, and Martin Luther King extended liberty; America has the strongest protection of free speech; Ayn Rand built Objectivism after fleeing Soviet Russia. Postwar brain drain drew scientists from Europe into American labs. Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) ended Japan’s will to fight; MacArthur’s occupation remade it a peaceful ally by introducing better ideas. The world voluntarily consumes Hollywood, jazz, Disney, Mickey Mouse, Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, Iron Man, and Coca-Cola — heroes and brands no other nation has replicated at this scale.
“At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled.”
― Ayn Rand, Anthem
The term “Anthemism” originates from the title of Ayn Rand’s novelette Anthem. This inspiring work, written in poetic prose, is read by thousands of high school students each year through the Ayn Rand Institute’s Books for Teachers program. From the book cover:
“Anthem has long been hailed as one of Ayn Rand’s classic novels, and a clear predecessor to her later masterpieces, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. In Anthem, Rand examines a frightening future in which individuals have no name, no independence, and no values. Equality 7-2521 lives in the dark ages of the future where all decisions are made by committee, all people live in collectives, and all traces of individualism have been wiped out.”
“A new generation has discovered that Rand’s Anthem is more socially relevant today than it was when it was written seventy-five years ago. Anthem is the classic story about the consequences of social collectivism and the importance of individualism. Anthem has been described as ‘one of the most important prose poems ever written.’”
“In her usage of the English language she combines clarity of expression with prose of poetic grace. Here, indeed, is an anthem-an anthem, not in the idiom of music, but in the more difficult medium of words alone. This is the most beautiful, the most inspiring novel this reviewer has ever read. It is an ethical and philosophical rather than a religious dedication to freedom and the individual.” — Joan DeArmond, Fact Forum News
“Reading this inspired little story is a rewarding and satisfying experience which no American should deny himself.” — All-American Books
