I discriminate mildly for intelligent, pretty, blue-eyed blondes, and very strongly for a particular one of them. 

I discriminate against shoddy, overpriced goods, and in favor of quality, inexpensive goods. I discriminate against money-losing investments, and in favor of money-making investments. 

I discriminate against liars and cheats. I discriminate against murderers and rapists. I discriminate against statists, collectivists, and irrationalists. It would be wrong not to discriminate against such vermin.¹ 

In fact, discrimination is essential. You can't live without it. You can't live for a day, let alone a lifetime, without continually choosing one thing and setting aside others, without preferring one thing to another. 

And unless your choices are to be random, like throwing darts blindfolded, you need some basis or standard for your choices. And that's discrimination! 

To discriminate is to choose by a standard. 

To oppose discrimination is to oppose choice, or standards, or both. 

But, you say, that's good discrimination! Most people only want to stamp out bad discrimination. 

Congratulations! You have just stated the truth that the establishment hopes you'll forget: some discrimination is good. 

But don't stop here. If you think about it some more, you will find that the existence of standards implies one particular code. And this will tell you a bit more about why the establishment opposes them. 

It works like this. Discrimination is choice based on a standard, and you discriminate between standards by using other standards. 

So, what is the first standard, where does it come from? It must be chosen, but how? Certainly not by means of a standard, for it is the first one. So, is there any choice which everyone provably makes? 

Yup! The root choice, on which all standards depend, is the choice to live. It is a choice which all (living) men have made, and which they renew moment by moment. 

Suicides are no objection to this point. Apart from illustrating that the choice to live or die is a real one, they are irrelevant. Only the living need standards. 

The choice to live implies the first standard: since you choose to live, live! In other words, choose that which sustains and enhances your life, choose your own good.² 

So, to accept objective standards is to arrive, eventually, at your own good as the basic standard. Now you know why the leftist establishment opposes objective standards. 

What!? You don't see it? Then let me put it this way: "your own good" is the standard of egoism! Still don't get it? Egoism is selfishness on principle, and the establishment really dislikes selfishness. So, quite consistently, they refuse to set one foot on a path that leads to it. 

But, you protest, everybody knows that only bad discrimination is under attack. The establishment war against discrimination-in-general is just a silly blunder. 

I beg your pardon. Are you saying that the crowd which denounces the word "mankind," lest women regard themselves as part of it, is careless with words? That those who invented whole dictionaries of politically correct speech would wipe out fundamentals of life through sloppy wording? I don't think so! 

Face it! When establishment spokescritters denounce discrimination, they mean what they say. And that raises the perpetual question asked by honest men in today's world, "What the hell is going on here? 

Racism is the chief pretext for the campaign against discrimination. The line of thought runs something like this: "Racism is irrational, immoral, collectivist discrimination. Whatever on Earth could be wrong with that? I know! It's wrong because it's discrimination?" 

If that logic seems less than lucid, try to understand the establishment's problem. They hold that reason is invalid, that morality is arbitrary, and that collectivism is a moral ideal. They don't like racism, but since they oppose reason, objective morality, and individualism, it's hard for them to say why they don't like it.³ 

Of course, it's no accident that they pick on discrimination. Discrimination implies standards, standards imply an objective code, and the establishment is committed to believe that morality is arbitrary. 

The campaign against discrimination comes straight from the establishment's basic ideas. They mean it. It is no silly blunder. Rather, it counts on you making the silly blunder of not taking it literally. 

Make no mistake. Your right to discriminate is under assault. 

So what? So the right to discriminate is the right to make your choices by your own standards. Among other things, it is the right to choose your friends and business associates. 

By what standards? By any standards you choose! The right to live your own life includes the right to choose your own standards, and the right to discover, devise, or advocate new standards. 

You've probably never heard of a right to discriminate, but it's really no new thing. 

The right to choose your friends and business associates by your own standards is freedom of association. The right to choose your standards and to discover or devise new ones is freedom of thought. The right to advocate your chosen standards to others is freedom of speech. 

These rights aren't (yet) controversial, but they are all rights to discriminate in various ways, so the war on discrimination is an assault upon them all. If you want to keep them, you'd better grasp that they stand or fall with the right to discriminate. 

And so does much else. The right to discriminate—the right to live a standards-oriented, standards-guided life—is nothing less than the right to live morally. 

And that is the ultimate target of the war on discrimination! And that is why you should defend your right to discriminate as you would defend your life itself! 

¹ I discriminate against racists, no matter what the tint of their hides! 
² See "The Objectivist Ethics," in The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, Signet, 1964. 
³ After all, it meets at least three of their, er, standards! 

You needn’t despair at the assault on standards—you can become a Quackgrass activist! Copy this article! Keep the original for future copies. Paper meetings with it! Paper your office! Leave a stack on your business counter! If you expect hostility, use stealth and cunning—it’ll drive your opponents wild! Be ingenious! Have fun!