By dismuke · March 31st, 2009 6:00 pm · 14 Comments
Rush Limbaugh had an outstanding monologue on his program today in which he praised and quoted Ayn Rand – including significant reference to one of my favorite Rand quotes about the smallest minority on Earth being the individual. Limbaugh praised self-interest, denounced sacrifice and said that he planned to spend more time on the issue in a future program. It is definitely worth taking a moment to read the monologue – if you are pressed for time, start reading at the third paragraph down.
Below is the conclusion of the monologue in which he describes Peter Keating type personalities as drags on society who are harming the country. This (along with his wonderful sense of humor) is a great example of why, whatever philosophical disagreements I might occasionally have with him, Rush Limbaugh is by far my favorite conservative.
When any of you decide to do away with pursuing what you want in your best self-interest, you are sacrificing who you are. You are giving up control of your essence, and you are saying, I would rather be a member of a group that is approved by people so that I don’t get criticized or so that I’m thought of as enlightened or so that I’m thought of as advanced. In the process, you are helping to destroy the very foundational building blocks of the greatest country on earth, the country in which you happen to be born and the country in which you happen to live. So giving up your individual identity, giving up who you are, sacrificing your passions and your desires and your own self-interests for the so-called common good, who gets to define the common good? I would define the common good as everybody acting as an individual, born as he or she is, pursuing self-interest. That’s the common good. That built cities; that built a great country; that built railroads and engines. It built airplanes. It built everything. People denying who they are did not.
When you deny your individuality, when you give it away for acceptance into a subgroup of people, you are harming the country; you are letting the country down; you are not pulling your weight. You are seeking approval, self-love and acceptance from all of the wrong sources. You’re giving up the greatest gift you ever had, and that’s who you are. And we have an administration that wants you to willingly and excitedly, eagerly give up who you are for a common good they define, a common good that requires you to deny who you are, your individuality, what makes you different from everybody else, whether you’re not as good or whether you’re much better at certain things. You will become a number. You will become a robot who can be programmed and inspired and motivated to behave in approved ways, and you will be taught to think you are virtuous when doing so, when all you’ve done is sold yourself and your country out. You give up your individuality, you sacrifice who you are, you allow that to be taken away for some mythical status as a member of a group, you are giving up your passion to become a moderate, or worse. People without passion never built anything. People without passion never got one thing done. People without passion are drags on achievement and accomplishment. That’s what this administration wants you to become.
The American federal government under the leadership of Obama, Pelosi, Reid and friends is grabbing power and destroying liberty so fast that it is hard to keep up. I don’t think anyone has been able to keep track of all of it, especially when sweeping laws are hidden in bills over 1,000 pages long that few read in their entirety.
It contains my argument on why it is contradictory for altruists to define themselves as “people that care”. I am addressing a commenter “Laura”, who identifies herself as a Christian, but seems to embody a more individualistic version of such than I’ve ever encountered.
It’s one of the essays I’ve had bouncing around in my head for years that I planned to write on my own blog, not in someone else’s comments… but it came together well enough there that I’m going to call it done and post it here.
I know a lot people don’t like calling our current mixed economy “socialism” or “fascism.” (I’ve noticed an increase in the word “statism” on the right. Before this year the word was rarely used, except by Objectivists and other free market “extremists.” My Microsoft Word program still thinks the word is a typo.)
I have a few question. If the state is firing CEO’s and telling businesses how much in bonuses they can get, how is this not fascism? At what point does a mixed economy that is heading toward fascism actually cross the line to fascism?
[UPDATE (Bill Brown): Megan McArdle entreats us to avoid using the "f-word" and David Henderson disagrees. Commenter L-C has the best take on this subject: "Do those who advance socialism and fascism deserve to dodge those labels all the way up until they’ve reached this goal?"]
The 3/27/09 Detroit News editorial section carried its usual Friday commentary by Frank Beckmann, a conservative and host of the Frank Beckmann Show on WJR Radio 9 am to noon daily. Today’s column gives a glimpse as to why I probably won’t be voting for Republicans anytime soon. It’s because they share the same values as the Dems.
The commentary is titled “What price should Hoekstra pay for Constitution-shredding vote?” Peter Hoekstra is a U.S. Representative from Holland Michigan and a Republican. Mr. Beckmann’s beef is that:
“Our U.S. Constitution is under attack from within after the U.S. House cast a resounding 328 yes vote to punish AIG executives after the fact for retention and other bonuses they received while being bailed out with federal tax dollars. Slapping a confiscatory tax on the bonuses allowed a majority of members of Congress to make populist points and feign outrage.
More seriously, the effort to reclaim the money, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, appeared to be in direct contravention of our most sacred document, the Constitution, by imposing a tax retroactively and only on a tiny, specific sector of private citizens.
The first Article — Section 9 — of the Constitution prohibits Congress from passing a “Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law,” which is what Pelosi’s AIG tax punishment would have done.
It should surprise no one that Pelosi, who recently declared illegal aliens to be patriots, would strong-arm fellow Democrats for support.
More surprising is that 85 Republicans would lock arms with her in approving the bill, including noted conservative U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland.”
So why did he vote with the Dems?
“The congressman explained that a vote against taxing the AIG bonuses would have been used against him in future political races, while a vote in favor of the tax may not be constitutional but has no chance of advancing through the Senate and on to President Barack Obama.”
How’s that for a principled pragmatic stand! In other words, he wanted to join in on the lynching of the businessmen because he thought it was the pragmatic thing to do regarding his election chances.
Mr. Hoekstra is expected to announce his candidacy for Michigan governor on Monday. So that means that he has to be at his pragmatic best I suppose. But it isn’t just Mr. Hoekstra that dismays me. It’s the 85 U.S. House Republicans that fell in lockstep with the Dems. No matter how bad the Dems get, I don’t see the Republicans as a viable replacement anytime soon and see no reason to vote for any of them.
By Jim May · March 27th, 2009 2:10 pm · 4 Comments
Paul Hsieh comments on a DC EXaminer article about the fast-moving expansion of government servitude organizations now likely to occur under Democrat rule — and likely to pass with Republican support.
The bill also summons up unsettling memories of World War II-era paramilitary groups by saying the new program should “combine the best practices of civilian service with the best aspects of military service,” while establishing “campuses” that serve as “operational headquarters,” complete with “superintendents” and “uniforms” for all participants. It allows for the elimination of all age restrictions in order to involve Americans at all stages of life. And it calls for creation of “a permanent cadre” in a “National Community Civilian Corps.“
While the Examiner is correct about the WWII-era feel of this proposal, I myself am also reminded of a time period just a few years earlier, a place several thousand miles further east, and another word with similar quasi-military connotations:
“With the creation of the German Labor Front, co-ordination became an elemental force, drawing all Germans in its wake. With sudden changes of name, the organizations of economic and cultural life co-ordinated themselves, and a country, which had always been rich in clubs and societies, was suddenly bristling with “fronts”.
–from “Der Fuehrer” by Konrad Heiden (1944 edition)
By Bill Brown · March 27th, 2009 7:43 am · 3 Comments
Many blogs do a caption contest every Friday wherein the blogger posts a picture and then visitors leave their take on an appropriate and funny caption for that photo. I really enjoy contributing to those sorts of things, but it doesn’t seem appropriate for TNC so how about a comment contest on Fridays. We select an article—nothing too lengthy—and you supply a comment analyzing it. Our commenters thus far have been exceedingly insightful so I’ll be most interested to read your take. Winner gets a free RSS subscription to TNC!
By dismuke · March 25th, 2009 5:21 pm · 7 Comments
This very eloquent YouTube clip of British member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan taking Prime Minister Gordon Brown to task is simply incredible and certainly equally applicable to our own Presidents Bush and Obama.
He has a blog too. While I have not yet had a chance to read very much of it, his most recent posting about the success of the YouTube clip and how it has bypassed the traditional, mainstream Walter Duranty media outlets is interesting.
By Amy Nasir · March 25th, 2009 3:46 pm · 5 Comments
One company refusing to be shackled, FedEx, backed out of a $7 billion Boeing order after Congress threatened to unleash the hordes of the wealth-plundering Teamsters on them, as reported by today’s Wall Street Journal, “FedEx Threatens to Cancel Jet Orders.”
Actually, FedEx did not “threaten” to cancel the order, it was arranged in their contract to begin with.A condition was stipulated that if the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved a bill facilitating workers’ unionization within the shipping service, FedEx could simply not afford to purchase the Boeing airplanes:
“It is exceedingly unlikely that we would purchase those airplanes” should Congress change the law, said FedEx spokesman Maury Lane. “The legislation could cripple the company and eliminate the need for the extra planes,” Mr. Lane said.
Among FedEx’s 290,000 workers, only the company’s 4,700 pilots are unionized. At UPS, about 240,000 of the companies 425,000 employees are union members, mostly Teamsters.
But according to Congressman Jim Oberstar (D-MN), FedEx will stay in business “somehow”:
“That’s huffing and puffing, that’s all that is,” said Rep. Oberstar, in response to FedEx.
So FedEx should not be angry, and just smile approvingly, when a government thug forces them to hire more employees at higher wages, buy more planes, run at loss and keep everyone on payroll and benefits regardless of the loss.Indeed, this would be an opportune set-up for a future bailout and nationalization.
The Teamsters quip that FedEx intends to “blackmail Congress.” Except the contract was between Boeing and FedEx, not FedEx and Congress. They say FedEx will “fire another torpedo through the American economy.” However, the economy does not run on the power of brute labor (or the union rajahs who collect dues), but by the exacting, long-range-thinking, value-making mind of a businessman. The Teamsters and Congress are the ones wielding the torpedo, and FedEx needs to find a big enough moral shield to fend off the attack.
Contact FedEx and tell them they are morally right to abide by their contracts regardless of what the slave-masters in Congress or the power-lusting Teamsters say. Kudos to FedEx if they stand their moral ground and assert their right to exist.
Environmentalists must really be feeling their oats, these days. The boldest among them are no longer even bothering to conceal or deny their real goal — the elimination of the plague, man, from the face of the earth. Their initial trial balloon, launched in Great Britain, calls for cutting that nation’s population in half. It used to be only the Earth Firsters who would say this stuff openly. Now, British politicians feel safe enough to get away with it.
JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.
Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.
The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.
Porritt said: “Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure.
They do continue to use the tired old lie that they are doing this “for man.” Orwellian double-speak has never been done better. In order to make the world a better place for mankind, we must eliminate half of mankind. And the sooner, the better.
By Amy Nasir · March 22nd, 2009 5:13 pm · 13 Comments
On Saturday, March 28, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., in contrast to the dubious “Earth Hour,” there are a couple of new movements celebrating the achievements of Thomas Edison and those men and women who—as Ayn Rand eloquently phrased—”took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.”
In honor of Edison Hour, which was coincidentally established by the University of Michigan Students of Objectivism and myself, and also in tribute to Human Achievement Hour, households and businesses across the nation will be keeping their lights and other electrical devices on, and refusing to concede the unearned guilt that environmentalists want to establish in our culture.
We live in the most innovative, life-sustaining and “money-making” country in mankind’s history, and we should never apologize for human happiness and success. So please remember to keep your lights on this coming Saturday. You may want to spend the hour by sitting down by the bright light of your lamp reading Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal or revisiting her uplifting novella, Anthem, from which I’ve selected a quote from its main character who rediscovered electricity and the light bulb:
I have learned that my power of the sky was known to men long ago; they called it Electricity. It was the power that moved their greatest inventions. It lit this house with light which came from those globes of glass on the walls.
Let’s make sure that the precious inventions that freed the world from darkness are never taken for granted, and especially not destroyed by the anti-man philosophy of environmentalism and “Earth Hour.” Let’s change the tide of the culture by celebrating human achievement and literally fending off the darkness.
By Myrhaf · March 21st, 2009 12:51 pm · 37 Comments
Because Americans are not used to rioting, and need a little instruction and encouragement to get them fired up, the Connecticut Working Families Party, an arm of ACORN, is bussing potential rioters around Connecticut to show them where AIG execs live.
If there is mob violence against big businessmen, it will be because the Democrat Party, led by Barack Obama, desired violence, planned violence, and acted to get violence started. It will NOT be because of the spontaneous anger of the common man, or whatever nonsense Washington, D.C. feeds us. The statists want a scapegoat, and you better believe they will get one. Leftists play the game politics for keeps.
Almost 50 years ago Ayn Rand called big businessmen America’s most persecuted minority. Nothing has changed. America has elected a black man as president, but there is no relief in sight for the most persecuted minority. Quite the opposite, President Obama is shaping up to be the greatest persecutor of a minority in American history.
By Jim May · March 19th, 2009 5:21 pm · 95 Comments
On March 13, Ed Cline wrote an excellent article on the Left’s startled reaction to the groundswell of interest in Ayn Rand and her book “Atlas Shrugged”. As he puts it:
“So the collectivist and altruist elite become very touchy when the people for whom they are “doing good” for their own sake, even to the point of enacting coercive and felonious legislation, exhibit signs of intelligence, resistance and anger. How dare these yokels!
And nothing raises their hackles higher than any mention of Ayn Rand. “
Ed’s article says everything that I would say about the anti-Rand reaction in general.
There exists, however, another sort of anti-Rand reactionary, who is not a member of those elites but desperately wants to be. This sort of person hates Ayn Rand and her ideas too, but instead of being threatened by her rising profile, see in it an opportunity for themselves — the same sort of opportunity that a brand new ship represents to young barnacles. (more…)
Anatole Kaletsky is worried about the populist rage brewing over the AIG bonuses.
This bloodlust raises a truly alarming question: can capitalism and democracy survive side by side?
Kaletsky’s question manages to get everything wrong. America and Britain are mixed economies, not capitalist economies. They are closer to the regimes of Hitler and Mussolini than the capitalist countries they were in the 19th century. Also, just for the record, our political systems are not democracies, but constitutionally limited representative republics.
One of the reasons that government seems to be on a fast track to total power over all of us via the politicization of science is that John Q Public has little knowledge of basic science. By way of Junkscience.com of March 16th is a post which links to Softpedia and an article on the sad state of public knowledge. The site’s science editor Tudor Vieru writes:
“According to a series of recent surveys among the general population, most US citizens seem to be unable to pass even the most basic science literacy test, a trend that has got experts very concerned. Because individuals lack this ability, they may find it very difficult to interpret scientific articles, and some may even misconstrue presented pieces of evidence and turn them into something they are not, like in the case of global warming. As people miss even the most basic background in science, they cannot actually emit an informed opinion, and the trend is growing with each passing year, experts note.”
I would blame a lot of this on the anti-conceptual philosophy of education that has gripped American schools for about 50 years I would estimate.Some of these earlier students are now in the media which aids and abets the general ignorance.
A case in point is two articles that appeared in the Detroit News on Mar 13th 09. One was titled “Pollution not only fouls air, it dims skies.” There should have been some mention that the pollution of the 1950s has been reduced by about 90% today. In a 2000 edition of Reason Magazine editor Ronald Bailey writes
“In the U.S., air quality has been improving rapidly since before the first Earth Day–and before the federal Clean Air Act of 1970. In fact, ambient levels of particulates and sulfur dioxide have been declining ever since accurate records have been kept. Between 1960 and 1970, for instance, particulates declined by 25 percent; sulfur dioxide decreased by 35 percent between 1962 and 1970. More concretely, it takes 20 new cars to produce the same emissions that one car produced in the 1960s.”
According to this our skies should be getting brighter not dimmer. The threat of dimming of course is just another attempt at scarring people into sacrificing more of their money and freedom to those who are collecting such sacrifices–politicians and enviros.
The second article is a new report from WAPO “Trace carcinogen amounts found in baby care products.” It states that:
“More than half of the baby shampoo, lotions and other infant care products analyzed by a health advocacy group were found to contain trace amounts of two chemicals that are believed to cause cancer, the organization said Thursday.
Some of the biggest names on the market, including Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo and Baby Magic baby lotion, tested positive for 1,4-dioxane, or formaldehyde, or both, the nonprofit Campaign for Safe Cosmetics reported.”
The report did carry contrary statements by Johnson and Johnson to the effect that the EPA has found these products to be safe. But considering today’s anti-business climate, many readers will just dismiss the statements as routine business denials. Over at the website STATS, a division of George Mason University, Trevor Butterworth reveals that:
“First, the CSC is driven by a group of environmental activist groups with a long history of hyperbole. The study was self-published, it wasn’t peer- reviewed; in fact, it wasn’t even scientific – if one takes science to be formulating a hypothesis and testing it against the full range of data.”
He goes on to discuss both formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane, said to be found in the health products and concludes:
“But here we come to the fundamental methodological flaw in report – one that underscores the need for real, peer-reviewed scientific analysis of chemical exposures and health and not activist reports designed to maximize media attention through sensationalism:
The Campaign measured how much formaldehyde was in the product, but not how much a child would actually be exposed to or absorb in the course of using that product.”
On 1,4-dioxane Mr. Butterworth writes:
“The other confounding problem with 1,4-dioxane is that we are exposed to it routinely in tap water, either by drinking or when we shower (as a volatilized compound), and in seafood, cooked meat, fried chicken, deep fry oil, ripe tomatoes, tomato paste, peppers, coffee, herbs and spices (within the range of 2-15ppm). In fact, given that 1,4-dioxane is more easily absorbed by ingestion and inhalation rather than absorption (due to its propensity to evaporate), the route of exposure is much more likely from the water we wash and shower in than through skin absorption from a cosmetic lotion.”
What makes the CSC report dishonest is the fact that it presents out of context assertions. It claims that all amounts of a carcinogen are dangerous and government force should be employed to ban them. The context being ignored by such activist groups is the toxicology principle that ‘the poison is in the dose.’ The human body has been evolving on this planet for thousands of years and has developed methods for dealing with trace amounts of toxic elements. Most people today have trace amounts of lead, mercury, dioxin, arsnic, asbestos, 1,4-dioxane and probably many others. Why aren’t we all dead? “The poison is in the dose” is why.
Activist groups like the CSC deliberately use out of context assertions knowing that many people, out of fear, will jump to the wrong conclusions. This fear is how they get donations which they use to lobby for governmental control over you and I.
The news about the Obama administration, the Reid Senate and the Pelosi House continues to be bad. Jaw-dropping bad. Obama won’t allow pilots to fly armed.
After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.
Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.
By Myrhaf · March 13th, 2009 11:10 am · 14 Comments
An administration’s goals should be plain and clear for all to understand, but with a President as dishonest as Barack Obama, who will say whatever he thinks people want to hear at the moment, it takes some detective work. Daniel Henninger has found “the Rosetta Stone” to understanding Obama’s economic policy. If you read nothing else today, you will want to read his piece. (HT: TIA Daily)
As many of us have suspected, Obama’s purpose is not, as voters assumed, economic prosperity. The Obama administration is the first in history dedicated to economic egalitarianism. 1% of taxpayers make 22% of the national income. Leftists cannot tolerate this “unfairness.” Obama’s economic policies have been constructed with the goal of reducing the amount of money the richest take home in order to decrease the gap between the rich and the poor.
By Bill Brown · March 13th, 2009 10:01 am · 2 Comments
Many blogs do a caption contest every Friday wherein the blogger posts a picture and then visitors leave their take on an appropriate and funny caption for that photo. I really enjoy contributing to those sorts of things, but it doesn’t seem appropriate for TNC so how about a comment contest on Fridays. We select an article—nothing too lengthy—and you supply a comment analyzing it. Our commenters thus far have been exceedingly insightful so I’ll be most interested to read your take. Winner gets a free RSS subscription to TNC!
This cold has knocked me flat on my rear end. It has sapped my energy so that I can only stumble around the house cursing and kicking the cats. Whatever capacity for cheerfulness I normally have is gone, and reading the latest news about the financial crisis and the little man in the White House does not help.
Every day I read something that makes me shake my head in disbelief. When asked about the stock market decline, Obama showed no concern, no understanding that it is a serious problem at all, but shrugged it off by comparing the stock market to opinion polls. A decade’s worth of wealth has been destroyed, and it means nothing to Obama. But whereas Obama shows no interest in the bear market, his administration is keenly interested in demonizing Rush Limbaugh.
There are some good posts on this Tuesday 3/10/09.
First, Robb at Robbservations has a good post on the concept’To big to fail.’ He shows how the whole policy is wrong headed.
*****************************************
Doug Reich at The Rational Capitalist takes a liberal writer to task for misrepresenting Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in a post titled “How can we take these people seriously?”
******************************************
Rob at The Morality War discusses your relationship to yourself and to others in a post titled “Who do you think you are?”
******************************************
Stephen Bourque at One Reality posts on the Republican’s role in the banking collapse in “Ted Kennedy’s down Payment.”
******************************************
Brian Phillips at Live Oaks laments Houston mayoral candidate Peter Brown’s desire to fashion Houston after other cities in terms of government provided services while ignoring Houston’s success at doing without them. I commented that Mr. Brown is a power luster since Houston’s freedom caused success means nothing to him.
******************************************
Ever wonder what a trillion dollars looks like? Beth at “Wealth is not the problem” links to another site that shows how awesome that number really is. And to think our new government is throwing multiples of that quantity around like it was candy.
