Tens of thousands of American taxpayers turned out across the country today at "Tax Day Tea Parties" to protest high taxes and accelerated government spending. Named after the famous Boston Tea Party rebellion of 1773, the idea for the tea parties was sparked in February by CNBC television correspondent Rick Santelli when he and fellow investors at the Chicago Board of Trade vented frustration on the air over taxation, bailouts, and creeping government power.

Good for Mr. Santelli. And good for everyone who responded to the pro-freedom, pro-rights message and participated in a local rally.

To be sure, such movements often attract a wide variety of conflicting philosophies and half-baked viewpoints. This is because most protests simply express disapproval of one thing without offering a positive alternative or solution.¹ But to a large extent, it appears that today's TEA events (an acronym for "Taxed Enough Already") appealed to a much better element. Whether they knew it in philosophical terms or not, many participants were not just protesting against taxes, but calling for a renewed focus on individual rights.

At the protest we attended today at Christopher Columbus Park in Boston, most of the signs in the air defended property rights (e.g. "You are not entitled to the fruits of my labor"), liberty (e.g. "Give me liberty, not debt!"), and other sentiments consistent with the idea of government restricted only to its proper role (e.g. "Cut the Government in half: I promise we won't mind!"). If the signs, conversations, and numerous comments that we received were any indication of the composition of the participants, then this was emphatically not a Republican, Libertarian, or Anarchist crowd—it was a crowd of predominantly secular, independent voters interested in individual rights as a moral and practical matter.

At a time when such ideals are systematically ignored by the media, if it takes a group of protestors standing outside with homemade signs for others to take notice, then that is a worthwhile step to take.

So how do the Tea Party principles apply to medicine? The principles apply because doctors—the producers of medical services—are individuals, too. Doctors should not be made the servants of others, whether through taxes or regulation, by virtue of the fact that they have chosen to dedicate their lives to a helping profession. Doctors, like individuals in all professions, must recognize their moral right to pursue their own happiness.

A tax-day statement from the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights says it well:

The pursuit of happiness is selfish. That's why you need the individual freedom of a capitalist system—to pursue your own interests, to act on your own judgment, to make your own life the best it can be. That's why you need to crusade for individual rights, not just against the latest Washington power grab. To mount such a crusade requires more than protest slogans and picket signs. You must resolve to morally defend the individual's right to live for his own sake, not as a servant of society. So long as you are willing to concede that self-interest and the profit motive are immoral, and that self-sacrifice for the "common good" is a moral ideal, you will continue to see freedom diminish and prosperity decline.

It may turn out that nothing more comes out of the Tax Day Tea Parties. After all, it will not be easy to mobilize these individuals, a very high percentage of whom have jobs, commitments, family responsibilities, and other demands on their time and energy. But at the very least these events have shown that the real American spirit is not dead yet

More photos from the event held in Boston at Columbus Park:

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¹ The recent G-20 protests provide a particularly good example of a vacuous, hodgepodge demonstration. News outlets reported such bizarre, aimless signs and chants as "Resistance is Fertile," "Make Love not Leverage," "Banks are evil," and "Eat the bankers."

² "ARC on the Tea Parties" Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, April 2009: Accessed online via www.aynrand.org

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