Maybe she's like the parrot on "Monty Python' Flying Circus".
Posted on 08/14/2007 10:46:31 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
It was the breaking-news headline last Friday that three construction workers had died in a coal-mine accident in Princeton, Ind., and maybe the markets melting down too, that congealed in my mind a thought I'd been kicking around for a while now: Our country is having an "Atlas Shrugged" moment.
Trapped coal miners in Utah, smashed levees in New Orleans, busted steam pipes and flooded subways in New York City, a collapsed bridge over the Mississippi River in Minnesota, an air-traffic-control system stressed to its break point. Could this really be a description of the most prosperous country on the planet? Can these all be coincidences? Is it time for a good old-fashioned conspiracy theory, the type that a reflection on Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan's early mentor, might inform?
For sensible adults who haven't thought about Rand and her darkly fabulist novel in years, the thing to remember about "Atlas Shrugged" - other than the cloying mystery, Who is John Galt? - is that the country was disintegrating in front of the eyes of our various capitalist heroes. The rail lines in particular were in peril in this 1957 book, a turgid ode to selfishness nonetheless considered a masterpiece by Rand's followers, who call themselves Objectivists.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Ask her? She’s not all that responsive. Being dead and all, you know...
All you have to do is look at Cuba, The old USSR & Eastern Bloc, Venezuela and Zimbabwe to see our future if the liberal idiot socialists finally succeed in all their schemes.........
While private businesses and industries can and do make mistakes, sometimes colossal ones, they can't hold a candle to government for sustained, painful, deadly and catastrophic malfeasance. I'd be willing to let market forces match up against bureaucratic forces in the long run.
Maybe she's like the parrot on "Monty Python' Flying Circus".
“Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world.
All the other social groups- workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers- exist under dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction.
But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship.
Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars.
Businessmen are the symbol of a free society- the symbol of America.”
Source: Capitalism – The Unknown Ideal Chapter 3
“Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.”
Source: Capitalism – The Unknown Ideal Chapter 20
“Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation’s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers.
In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.”
Source: Capitalism – the Unknown Ideal Chapter 3
All by Ayn Rand
When in danger fear , or Doubt, run in circles ,scream, and shout. It will not solve anything, but it will sure keep you busy.
As America gives "God" his walking papers trying to deport him from public life.. America sprials down the ethics tube.. When Americans become corrupt Americas government becomes even more corrupt.. No mystery here..
PING!.....
heh heh, I like IT!
Holy smokes, this is on CNN’s website? Icicles are forming in Hell right now.
Because democRATs would rather destroy it than lose power.
Just sleeping? Pining for the fjords?
"We buried my mother last month. Had to. Dead, you know"....
"We buried my mother last month. Had to. Dead, you know"....
Just since the beginning of this year, I finally took on the challenge of getting through Rand’s 2 major novels. I had to learn to set aside her atheism and see it as a sort of “secular gospel” as it applies to those who are out there just trying to deal fairly and honestly in “value traded” kinds of endeavours. “Fairly and honestly” is not only important because one day I will have to answer to God, but also because nothing else really works in business from what I can see.
Add to this the “diversity” that Ayn Rand did not envision and you might find more than one John Galt deserting the system - especially in the federal government.
Read the whole article. It has a 100% misleading title and lead-in, imo.
Here’s a money quote:
“What’s causing all this? Could it be the reverse of the “Atlas Shrugged” effect? Might it be that greedy capitalists, comfy in their private jets and third, fourth and fifth vacation homes, aren’t paying attention to the national infrastructure that they don’t think they need to use?”
Only a navel gazing junior propogandist twerp could write this:
“As for the political leadership, infrastructure spending is one of those rare instances where President Bush’s take is spot-on correct, though his words likely won’t be heeded because he is so unpopular and divisive. (The immigration debate, where the president has been pragmatic and right from the beginning, also comes to mind.)”
You can only pray that the AS would be in effect. I'd probably be left starving outside of Gault's Gulch but I own a gun and know how to skin and cook an animal (seen it on TV enough - can't be hard).
Businessmen existed under Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, various Asian (Korea & Taiwan for example), African and Latin American dictatorships.
Here’s how we can disprove Libertarianism once and for all.
Libertarianism supports the following principles
1) No restrictions on inheritance
2) No restrictions on land accumulation
3) Minimal rules and laws for landowners.
4) Landowners have the absolute right to determine who can rent their land.
With these four principles of Libertarianism we get the English Monarchy.
If you have ever watched his bit about the "Ministry of Silly Walks" ya' gotta' love his cool way of making fun of bureaucracies.
What a steaming pile of socialist apologia this article is. Give me a turgid ode that’s correct any day over slick tripe that’s patently wrong.
They were not businessmen!
Ummm, Ayn Rand was an atheist that thought faith was as silly as communism. Probably not a good idea to base US policy on her thinking.
I’ll tell you that this business woman is fast becoming apathetic.
We are forced to sell sub-par Chinese imports in order to compete, our customers are constantly calling about warrenty issues. Our employees stand around with their hands out demanding more...more sick leave, more vacation, more insurance, company trucks, cell phones and none of them care about us or their jobs.
I have one warehouse employee who can’t afford for us to give him a raise. He’s discovered that the government will provide him housing, food, medical care, and sub-for-Santa as long as he doesn’t make over $10.00 an hour. We would have to pay him $18.00 per hour to be on an even keel with the government freebies.
I work 10 hours an day, 6 days a week and make about $30,000 a year. I can’t afford to give my employees or my customers more....I’ll go hungry. I don’t think they understand that their demands are killing my business. I could hire illegal aliens and get by for a little while longer, but I refuse upon principal.
It would be easier to quit and rest on my laurels. But I won’t.
True but the corruption of Louisiana and New Jersey are legionary.. Massachusetts is a joke.. and New York especially the city is an effort in givernment parasiteism.. The Mafias protection scam gone public..
When a government can TAX something you OWN.. you are merely RENTED IT from the government.. And Americans generally go DOH!.. like Homer Simpson.. especially democrats and more and more republicans.. Was Rudy Giuliani running for President a JOKE OR WHAT?..
Has Fred Thompson joined the race yet?
Do you refer to “the fountainhead” and do I have that completely messed up? I’ve heard (but cant say for certain) that the book is SOOOO secular as to be nearly blasphemous. Having devoured Atlas Shrugged, I’m interested in her other works.
Please try to take an Objective look at this.
/grin
S'not idiocy. Tis the objective.
How can the New World Order be brought in while the U.S. stands strong?
It can't.
Hence the effort to destroy the U.S. financially and culturally.
“While private businesses and industries can and do make mistakes, sometimes colossal ones, they can’t hold a candle to government..”
Additionally, private businesses do suffer for their mistakes by having to pay the consequences - government, however, will merely pass any consequences on to the public and find an excuse to justify their action. If there is a national monetary loss to be paid, all government has to do is to raise taxes.
Building cool stuff and keeping it working for fifty years require two very different core competencies. Maybe Las Vegas has the right idea - just tear everything down after 15-20 years and start over. ;)
Bullcrap.
L
, The US was the last nation to collapse under the oppressive weight of socialism........When the lights went out in NYC, it was over............
Getting close, probably not..
Fred looks like and can probably ACT like a President..
But he is not smart enough to be President, Newt is..
America does not want Newt.. and probably Fred either..
America wants a moron to be the next President, probably Hitlery..
Giuliani is just too weird, Romney is to much like a Scientologist(Mormon)..
Duncan Hunter, sad to say, don't have the killer instinct..
ONLY Newt on the republican side is MEAN ENOUGH to be President..
Newt however is smart enough to KNOW America don't want him..
America is too busy reading the Vagina Dialogs..
To be bothered with a bone mean white american male..
Look how they treated Rummy.. America has become sissified..
2008 will reflect that.. both in Congress and in the Oval office..
Republicans making preparations for that are almost nonexistent.. except for NEWT..
As I said Newt is smart..
Please, please read “Anthem”. First read this little book back in the seventies and it changed my life.
I just re read it and still get chills when I read the book.
Yes, “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” are the 2 I’ve read. I can understand a person seeing near blasphemy in either. I had to consciously set her atheism aside as just superfluous and silly in order to discover secular story and philosophical principles of value in each work. I am a believing Christian, yet I don’t feel the need to put up a billboard to that effect and I’ve learned the hard way to be leery of those who do, especially where business is concerned. I guess that conversely the need to dwell on one’s denial of God’s very existence is equally pointless. The word “ethics” has a cold connotation in my mind, as if I am “god” and can describe and define right and wrong, good and evil. “Morality” seems a bit distant a term, too. I guess I’m someone who has only figured out “right” after having experienced the pain of “wrong” so often.
Read Fountainhead. Read it first. Everything of importance and value to the author is there.
Very good point.
But its a mystery Ayn Rand would not have understood. She ultimately blamed the concept of original sin on the socialist mindset that she was afraid would undermine America.
Graft is everything.
True.. socialism drove her obsession with selfishness..
Socialism attacks selfishness while supporting extreme selfishness..
She missed that..
On her best day she was never as good as that parrot. Funniest Python skit - that and the one about the dummy salesman.
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