And anyone who understands it is no swing voter.
We have seen:
Jeremiah Wright damn America
ACORN justify falsifying elections in our face saying 'they can't help themselves'
Ayers planning an encomium for his thinkalike's successful silent internal revolt and overthrow of private property with the silent acceptance of the populace
The plumber lectured on the right of the people to his work
Biden telling us that right is actually patriotism
Obama telling us that right is being neighborly (or else ?)
The attempted criminalization, and intimidation of criticism
Justified criticism portrayed as George Wallace hate and racism
"News Media" openly become shills for a political party and candidate
Partisan organs baldly insisting they are impartial
National interest and the well being of the people put aside by one party for partisanship
"A man more able than his brothers insults them by implication" Ellsworth Toohey
We have seen:
Jeremiah Wright damn America
ACORN justify falsifying elections in our face saying 'they can't help themselves'
Ayers planning an encomium for his thinkalike's successful silent internal revolt and overthrow of private property with the silent acceptance of the populace
The plumber lectured on the right of the people to his work
Biden telling us that right is actually patriotism
Obama telling us that right is being neighborly (or else ?)
The attempted criminalization, and intimidation of criticism
Justified criticism portrayed as George Wallace hate and racism
"News Media" openly become shills for a political party and candidate
Partisan organs baldly insisting they are impartial
National interest and the well being of the people put aside by one party for partisanship
Who is John Galt?
What will you do, Obama, when enough of the producers and thinkers don't think it's worth it, and all future history points to this moment for the beginning of the slide?
What will you do, Obama, when enough of the producers and thinkers don't think it's worth it, and all future history points to this moment for the beginning of the slide?
12 comments:
Epaminondas,
So your thinking that Obama is going down or that he won't stand a chance of getting reelected?
On the contrary, I see a majority docile population, content to take other's efforts as value for themselves - ready to cast a vote for it, and undiscerning of what is being THROWN in their faces - IF the polls can be believed
Epaminondas,
Than why are quoting Atlas Shrugs as if Obama was from Ayn Rand's fantasy world? I never read the story, but I know a thing or two about Objectivism and I have an idea as to what the bad guys in it represented and what happened to them in the end.
Actually, I quoted both the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugs.
I would say Toohey (Fountainhead) represents the people who are going to vote for Obama, and I would say their deadliest enemy would be John Galt, who brought down every producer and thinker in order to hasten the end of a non capitalist society.
Damien, even when I was a young Objectivist back in the 60's I used to think of the world of "Atlas Shrugs" as a fantasy full of people who didn't have literal counterparts in the real world.
Then, as the decades went by, I either met or observed every damn one of them.
Now I'm seeing the novel's premise of a world on the brink of cataclysm caused by a devil's brew of political, religious, and philosophical irrationality -- that's too tame a word -- insanity, play out in front of my eyes. Financial calamity "rescued" by nationalizations? Drilling in ANWAR opposed in order to protect polar bears? A fanatical religion straight out of the Dark Ages resurgent and threatening to take over Europe and infiltrate the United States of America? A maniacal dictator openly boasting that he will destroy the state of Israel as soon as his third-world nation's nuclear weapons program makes it possible? Overt racists poised to extract "revenge" and "reparations" from a whole race for wrongs committed 150 years ago by dead men?
Where is the fantasy here?
revereridesagain,
From what I've heard, things are not really working out the way Rand would have expected, at the time she wrote Atlas Shrugs. I don't want to go into too much detail, but I have heard some other things about the story that make it sound implausible and even disturbing to me. Like this.
The point Rand was trying to make with the train wreck was that everyone on board had contributed in some way to creating the circumstances that led to the disaster. It was sort of an existential train wreck as much as a real one. And it's really very pertinent to the current political "train wreck" with voters just surrendering themselves to Obamania, not bothering to learn the facts about him and his associates and beliefs, being unwilling to listen to criticism of him, taking whatever the MSM spoonfeeds them as gospel, not bothering to learn about the realities of Islam or even rudimentary economics. If he is elected and we get curtailment of our Constitutional rights, if our earnings are confiscated, if Sharia is allowed into our legal and financial systems, if the Islamists are allowed to destroy Israel and swallow Europe, if our schools are turned into indoctrination camps for Obama Youth, will those who voted for him not be partially to blame for that even if they become victims of it themselves? More so than the train passengers, who wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time, certainly, because they will have ignored reality and voted on the basis of what they wish to be true. And some of them will become victims along with those of us who chose to resist.
"Atlas" is fiction. The plot is implausible in the literal sense of all the innovators and producers and creators getting together and going "on strike". (Of course, if you look at it that way, the American Revolution was pretty damn implausible!) The reality we're in won't be resolved so neatly. But a lot of the same principles are at work. We're under siege by what Rand used to call "mystics" and "looters" -- in our case, the Islamists and the Marxists. Can they do as much catastrophic damage as their counterparts in the novel? At this point I wouldn't bet any serious money against it.
revereridesagain,
We clearly agree on some things. We both oppose Obama, (if only I could get my immediate family to do the same) both of us are anti Marxism, anti socialism, anti Jihad, anti Sharia, and pro individualism! As for Atlas Shrugs, I've never read it, but I have heard a lot of negative things about it.
By the way, I think the American Revolution was much more plausible than every single innovator and producer in the country, going on strike at once. That said there really is no point in us arguing over this.
revereridesagain,
I can't believe that I forgot to mention that I'm a big time supporter of the American constitution. That's one more area that we agree on, but we probably wouldn't agree on interpretation in some areas.
Damien, read both. Then comment.
Start with the Fountainhead. Atlas is bigger than War and Peace but makes the point rather finely - which is - nothing more or less than - socialism is against human nature. Any facet of socialism is against human nature. I don't think you will find many making a dedicated personal philosophy of Ayn Rand past this point.. Each of us is entitled to own the fruit of our own mind and work and deny that fruit if we so choose to anyone else without any further qualification or explanation.
If that's not founding fathers private property = freedom stuff I can't imagine what is
Atlas Shrugged is being made into a movie right now, and amazingly, Angelina Jolie has the Dagny Taggart lead. Brad Pitt is supposed to be in it as well, but he might be in any of several choice parts.
Epam, is that definite about the movie? They've been trying to get that book on the screen, big and small, for nearly 50 years and the plans always have fallen through. Some of us have been playing "cast Atlas Shrugged" for so long that the actors are grandparents by now, or dead. I heard the last time there was a script proposal the writers came up with something involving aliens from outer space. (Well, I did just say it reminds me of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" lately, heh...) Leonard Peikoff, who is the executor of Rand's estate, was there and I guess he told them what they could do with their script and their aliens. Jolie could work as Dagny, but I wonder if she understands the novel sufficiently. Too bad her father, John Voight, isn't in on the project.
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