Ayn's characters never challenged whats wrong
Posted by EngineerJ 11 years, 11 months ago to The Gulch: General
She told us what would happen but the characters never publically challenged what was happening.
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Their disappearances made it so their silence wasn't taken as agreement. Plus, John Galt's speech was him speaking up on all of their behalf.
Beginning pg 92-94, ACE books ed. published July 2006. An interesting treatise on 'value'.
There are many more topics that can be discussed based on math, science, and connecting all the dots to show the facts of what is happening.
Not everything is taught in schools and the philosophy they teach did not come until they had enough food to eat and time to sit down and consider it.
Did you learn everything you know in school or did you learn a lot after you left. School is not the end-all of education!
As I have just posted to other comments, people need to explain the fundamentals of the problems with math, science and connecting all the dots.
I have commented today on Food Stamps with many of the dots that those who say the put money into the economy have ignored. How many of those with the bully pulpit have done this?
Math, science and connecting all the dots for people can explain to them many things. Such as:
Why Stimulus will not work.
How the Government has stolen half of the Social Security trust fund.
The fact that no government employee pays REAL taxes.
How to raise 1 trillion in IRS TAX revenue without hurting the economy.
How the political alchemists are continually trying to do things that are impossible such as Perpetual Motion and turning lead into gold.
I have not heard anyone explain these things, the best I have heard is "I HAVE A PLAN!"
You have good points about WHY don't those who have a spot at the podium don't spell out the obvious and what needs to be done...probably vote related...which goes right back to the root of the problem. Corruption.
I take walks around my neighborhood and there are a couple of people that have discussed many of these points and agreed with the arguments.
As to the Middle East, We used to be the economic power house and that demanded respect.....
These are successful people that have the money to pay people to do their talking. If they are successful, they direct their business but do not direct their spokes people. If you want the support of the people you have to explain in their terms what is happening.
He ignored Mouch because to pay any attention to Mouch would be to embrace the premise that HR needed support from the government to exist. He did not need them.
It is true that her heroes did not engage in the political realm. It's true in real life. People are busy producing, they don't have time to get involved in politics. Being in politics and effecting change, is hard to also spend time on a for profit business that isn't involved with that. It's only when people take a step back from their business/work pursuits, can they justify the time and talent. Or make the politics pay. One or the other. In Rand's case, she found a way to successfully make developing a philosophy pay. She was very clear this is a battle of ideas.
*SPOILER*
JG and HR and DT were not in the media business nor in politics. Their ability to speak out was limited probably more so when AS was written than today.
Remember what happens when HR hires Mouch to look after his political interests?
Now, back to my point. Does 'fight with force with force' mean preemptive action, if needed? In "Virtue"(blast, I can't find the reference) AR (or the other fellow) was talking about dealing with thugs and other looters in a reactive manner. Is that the most efficacious method of survival? By the time you can react, you may be overrun by them and lost your chance for survival.
"To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival; to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man’s capacity to live.
Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason—as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no “right” to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.
To force a man to drop his own mind and to accept your will as a substitute, with a gun in place of a syllogism, with terror in place of proof, and death as the final argument—is to attempt to exist in defiance of reality. Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threatens man with death if he does not act on his rational judgment; you threaten him with death if he does. You place him in a world where the price of his life is the surrender of all the virtues required by life—and death by a process of gradual destruction is all that you and your system will achieve, when death is made to be the ruling power, the winning argument in a society of men.
Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: “Your money or your life,” or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: “Your children’s education or your life,” the meaning of that ultimatum is: “Your mind or your life”—and neither is possible to man without the other." Galt's Speech
http://www.mrctv.org/videos/home-depot-f...
http://news.yahoo.com/video/carls-jr-ceo...
http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/20...
As to those that have the bully pulpit, I have tried show them how connect the dots with facts and have yet to see any of them even consider doing it. One specific that comes to mind is the food stamp question.
http://www.ronpaulchannel.com/subscribe-...
All I have seen of Ron Paul is that he has a "PLAN"! People are hungry for facts of why things are going wrong!
The Conservatives and the Republicans have become reactionary. They never challenge the liberals they just react to what they do. The Liberals know this and know what reaction they will get before they do anything!
Don't blame the messenger for the lack of a concerned audience.
What they showed was the abuse, and the lack of means testing that plagues the program. Any analysis of the return benefit for the taxes collected for the program, would have been 'not for prime time' in both interest, and/or too cerebral for the audience. Sad...but true.
The 'watch the shiny object' approach is the best way to get the most attention. You are not the average cable news watcher.
Sometimes you have to talk down to the masses....
Not all the people that are being mislead are the uneducated masses. There are a lot of smart people out there that haven't stopped to think everything through. I have surprised a lot of fairly smart people with things like this and the fact that no government employee pays REAL taxes or how the government has stolen half of the Social Security Trust Fund!
It is too easy to see the puffball of mass media or to get discouraged by the people around you. But they do not matter. As Francisco said about James, "People like him just clutter up the world." They make the laws because we let them. Letter to the editor, maybe... vote in a primary maybe... run for office (I have; and won)... but never really say it all, all at once, once and for all.
John Galt's Speech does that. The rest of Objectivism explains the details. 40 million copies worth...
And in addition, we have lifelong comrades in the Foundation for Economic Education, and the Mises Institute and the Cato Institute. You must know the TV series "The West Wing." We own all eight seasons. It is misunderstood among "conservatives." I won't defend it here and now, but, if you watch it enough, you will see REASON Magazine in the literature rack on the set.
Elections? Elections are a scam.Voting was always problematic in Chicago and Texas. But electronic voting is like the old joke about the accountant who got hired because when asked "how much is two plus two" she answered "how much would you like it to be." Forget elections.
Forget trying to convince people. The people who want to know, already do. You are just among the most recent. Welcome.