Genesis of the "NO" Logo
In history there have been two basic forms of social organization: collectivism and individualism. In the 20th and 21st century, collective variations have included socialism, fascism, Nazism, and communism. Under collectivism, a ruling class of “intellectuals”, bureaucrats, politicians and/or social planners decides what people want or what is “good” for society and then uses the coercive power of the State to regulate, tax and redistribute wealth in an attempt to achieve their desired objectives. Individualism is a political and social philosophy that emphasizes individual liberty, belief in the primary importance of the individual and in the virtues of self-reliance and personal independence and responsibility. It embraces opposition to controls over the individual when exercised by the state. The Preamble to our Constitution makes it plain that all power rests originally with the people, as individuals.
The “O” within the circle represents collectivism in its various forms. The “N” represents an emphatic repudiation of collectivism. The red, white and blue circles encompassing the “NO” are emblematic of our Republic. It is the responsibility of the individuals in an engaged and enlightened republic to limit the influence of the government, especially one that attempts to wield power outside the boundaries delineated by the Constitution.
Among economic thinkers over the past 200 years, there have been two dominant schools of thought on the nature of wealth. According to men like Adam Smith and J.B. Say, wealth is primarily a matter of the human spirit, “the result of ideas, imagination, innovation, and indi vidual creativity, and is therefore, relatively speaking, unlimited, susceptible to great growth and development.” The other dominant school, represented by such men as Thomas Malthus and Karl Marx, believes “wealth is essentially and primarily physical and therefore ultimately finite.”[4]In the free world “the major productive resource is personal productive capacity—what economists call ‘human capital.’”[9] Human capital includes things like character, knowledge, skills, creativity, health, imagination and liberty. The person or people possessed of substantial human capital is characterized by a strong future-orientation. That is, they are willing to delay present satisfaction in order to enable either themselves, their children, or someone else to enjoy greater satisfactions at some later time. The future-oriented father is concerned to develop his children’s potentialities to the full, and toward this end he stresses the values of hard work, self-discipline, initiative, honesty and unselfishness.
