good luck with that...
Posted on 04/16/2011 11:31:56 PM PDT by The Watcher
Freepers... I am the son of a son of immigrants, a working class stiff, who came from a poor family. I've never known wealth and am unlikely to. However, I see the endless refrain to attack freedom to be in your own business, to do as you see fit, and to direct your own fate and your own energies very much in danger.
As one person with many talents, and capabilities I know that are greater than the sum of just hours and hands, it seems to me at days, that it really is time to "go galt", and just withdraw. And on other days, it seems to me that the Mouch types haven't won yet and the future is not set... The country CAN be turned back.
Galt wasn't a protester. He didn't arrange rallies and make big speeches, he did the one thing that could be done, sans violence, to defeat the people who controlled both the laws and the media.
It would be fantastically easier, if we could convince 500 titans of industry to "go galt' with their personal wealth and just let the political left collapse under its own weight of incompetence and impossible to fulfill promises.
What is clear, is that the first step, known as TEA Party, has happened. That is, a mass outpouring of indignation at the stupidity of the looting class and the punishement of success.
In Rand's novel, the public fails to understand, and instead, simply follows like sheep. Perhaps Rand never grasped what American means, and that it means that even if it's a minority, Americans as a whole simply do not fall for the socialists, the redistributionists, the elitists, etc.
It seems to me that FR has become the news and daily exchange for links of data and intel, a smallish coordinator of activism, but it is NOT a platform for serious debate.
Debate what? About "going galt". No, I don't mean to withdraw from society and go on strike, though I suppose somewhere in the future that might actually be an option. Rather, a somewhat more disciplined discussion to do what Galt saw as needing to be done. To unite the people who matter into action to achieve the ends that were required to save the nation from destruction. Rand's story is about starving the regime into collapse. But the whole purpose is not about exacting revenge or collapsing nations... It's about removing from the controls of power, people who have become professional looters of others for political power, and who hold places of influence, who have spread the poison of leftist dogma as the only truth... Poisoning the American soul with dependency and worse.
Would you be interested in a forum to have said debate? And by debate, I don't mean political diatribes, but instead, deadly serious discussion about, and coordination of, durable societal change, from the ground up.
I'll fund the startup of such a forum, but I lack the means to continue it and grow it to national stature or size, it would eventually require support, mostly in commitment and time, and a tireless recruitment effort, to make the movement large enough to do what Galt's team did... change a nation.
I have little illusion that anything I start can become that in and of itself. But one little light can light another, and another, and another.
What say you? Would you be in?
I’m not sure I understand why you are asking FReepers to start a new forum...can’t you do what you want to do here?
good luck with that...
Here’s your problem: Those “500 titans of industry” all vote Democrat and give to liberal candidates and causes. All so as to destroy small competitors by using the power of the state to given themselves de facto monopoly or oligopoly control. It is as if, in an absurd backwards way, Marx is right: the wealthy ruling class fattens itself on the back of the producers, but in reality they do so by using Marxist means. The producers, in this case, are the true capitalists, entrepreneurs and small-to-medium sized business owners who see their ideas destroyed and their wealth appropriated for bailouts by those 500 titans of industry.
“Going galt” has got to be one of the most idiotic things I’ve heard across the Conservative spectrum. And feeling defeated is not a good excuse to embrace it.
“Your Hope redistributed. Here’s your Change” — an old tongue-in-cheek tag. Let’s not make it so.
I don’t need a debate on why I hate Obama, liberals and Dummycrats. I wont pray for them and anything that makes their destruction possible makes me happy.
It’s too bad you didn’t read what I said. Why don’t you go back and read it again, insted of knee jerk reactions?
This technology, layout, and platform absolutely does NOT lend itself to debate at all. It it designed to facilitate the mass postings of new links and articles, shoving the old into obscurity.
Good debate requires specific structure, moderation, and the proper interface.
Look, those that will burn in hell will burn there regardless.
We shouldn’t hide from them, we should simply remind them of their fate while speeding them to it through voting and working.
Hmmm.... I don’t believe I said it could be done... The book was about convincing a few hundred to go on strike, crippling the country. That would be easier, if possible. But I don’t think that’s an option. At all.
Which is why I said we need a grassroots discussion of accomplishing durable change in our nation. I have yet to find such a thing, anywhere. Not even here.
An underground already exists; some of it is formal, I’m sure, but most of it is not.
Galt is not my hero- I’ve not read the book. Jesus is my hero and I’ve internalized His outcome for this world, to the point of death (which I do not seek or relish at present).
Push come to shove, most Christians will die for their faith, though.
Without God I cannot discern any meaning for this life.
You didn’t read my post either. I guess nobody did.
it used to be that Freepers were a serious lot, with plenty of intellectual horsepower. So far, all I’ve seen is knee-jerk reactions to keywords.
I guess I’ll monitor this until it falls off the radar, but it appears that this is not the place to find serious people anymore.
I re-read your statement and think that you have an interesting take, a take I have pondered.
The bottom line is that Cloward & Piven have won, in some ways. Kids are taught the CORRECT ANSWER (the one that gives them an ‘A’) is the Communist/Socialist answer. There are more takers than producers and the planned influx of the third world, both legal and illegal is gutting the social order of a once proud country.
If 50% of your populace does not pay into the system and the producers are shrinking and retiring, and their replacements are spoiled, weak, PC Greenies, the backbone has rotted, so to speak.
I often wondered about buying 20,000 acres up in Idaho or Montana and growing food and having a Conservative “refuge” for like-minded people, but I then think of Jim Jones/Ruby Ridge stuff and back off that idea. If I bug out of CA, it will be on 10 acres up in rural Oregon or suburban Idaho.
The hardest part to accept is that many nice and well-meaning people really believe the New York Times and NBC News, thinking it is rational, objective reporting. We here at FR know the painfully obvious omission, spin and utter lies they produce, but if you are on the teat, and Kate Couric tells you it’s OK and Obama is doing great, your business isn’t affected because you do not really drive the economy. The Public Unions are so self-centered they cannot see the fact that they are killing the very source of their outrageous salaries, perks, healthcare and pensions...
I want to make a difference and get the gist, but am unsure of how banding could work, logistically.
The whole rest of my post is about NOT DOING THAT, but instead, debating and coordinating something useful.
Rand’s novel had a few key industries and titans of them held the nation in their hands. We are actually a nation of 25 million businesses, 25 million producers and ‘captains’ of their destiny. Why would I think that a ‘strike’ is really the means? I merely expressed my fatigue at having to be the daily target of mindless prejudice and stupidity, because I’m in business for myself.
Here’s the problem - debate is essential in the real world, while in cyberspace it works for a time, and then devolves into either agitation or mediocrity. It’s too easy for someone to be inflammatory and use word bombs when they don’t get their way, because a wall exists between them and the one they are goading.
Be careful for what you wish - the government will attempt a Real ID and the forum to go along with it. “Going Galt” from Free Republic is not the answer. Nor is even thinking about a withdrawal from society when the pendulum is beginning to swing our way.
You raise the first most obvious points... That of the alteration of education. We as conservatives need to intentionally invade education, take it back from the liberals and set things right.
You don’t seem to understand... the left has arranged hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to fund their debates and coordinate their propaganda machines, to fund thier assault on education and so forth. Conservatives have not a single, grassroots intentional effort to organize to counter it head on, from the people up. There’s always think tanks who publish in DC, get accolades from a few thinkers and yet, the public knows nothing of it.
This means starting a debate, learning from those who know, how to create an effective media, and launching said media. How to invade academia, and deliberately coordinating the effort to do just that. They do and have done it for decades... Now it’s our turn.
I said “serious” discussion, and I meant deadly serious.
That is not the way to win hearts and minds.
I guess I didn’t address your concerns directly.
Many of us are off-grid, or out of the dependency loop already. Self-sufficiency is not a novel concept.
I can’t extract myself much more from the “system” at present.
There is already an underground economy. There are already people raising food and animals out of the mainstream market.
What am I missing?
This is very true and I have noticed the same problem in the past 10 years.
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