In response to the ridiculous claims by Democrats that Bush in effect pushing seniors of a cliff by “privatizing” social security, the RNC has released an even more ridiculous cartoon about Bush “saving” social security, as if this Ponzi scheme of the ages can (or should) be saved:
The Republicans also reassure us that Bush’s scheme is NOT in fact privatization:
Dante said in the Divine Comedy that “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in time of great moral crisis.” For those of us who understand the dangers of collectivism and its growth in America during the 20th century and especially now, the time of great moral crisis is upon us NOW. However, among those aware of the dangers of omnipotent government, there are two kinds of people.
One has grown weary or apathetic of the fight for freedom and compromised with the dominant ideas of the day. They include many prominent libertarians and conservatives as well as organizations that promise to “defend our rights” while conceding the argument that “some” rights should be limited. Some of them have gained fame, fortune, and success, and claimed that “compromise” with the other side is necessary because “idealism” and “radical ideas” will never be the “practical” thing to do.
However, there is a second, smaller group of individuals who recognize that, as Ayn Rand said, “In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.” They realize that in the process of compromising with their opponents, they concede that statists have a point, that maybe the government really does have the right to interfere in our lives, and the question is only how much of our lives the government may run for “the social good.” This second group recognizes that the problem with conservatives is that they can only say “slow down!” on the road to serfdom. By compromise, they may gain all sorts of recognition and win the battle, but inevitably, they lose the war because they betray their own side.
There is an even smaller group of intellectuals among those who refuse to compromise with evil. These are people for whom the fight for freedom is not a burden but a joy. Many of them are alienated and belittled by their fellow intellectuals, lose opportunities for prestigious academic positions, have a hard time getting their books published, and are frequently lambasted as “radicals” by the media. However, they generally manage to live happy and successful lives and rarely, if ever, complain of their fate. I believe that the distinguishing feature of such men and women is that they care about ideas – they believe that what is True and Good is True and Good no matter how unpopular it is and no matter how much misfortune their views give them. As one jailed Soviet dissident said “I cannot do otherwise.” Not all of them are right, and in fact many of them differ with me on many views, but all of them believe that life is only worth living when it is lived on one’s own terms — or as Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death!”
If I were to worship anyone or anything in this world, it is these men and women that I would worship and proudly call my heroes. Their greatness comes not from their willingness to make great sacrifices or act with unusual bravery, as society tells us, but simply to life every day of their lives with the proud motto that ideas matter. They wont think twice about sacrificing worldly success, material values, or even their lives for that they believe in: for them it is not a sacrifice but the preservation of the only terms they are willing to live their lives by. As Howard Roark said in The Fountainhead when he acted on principle and forfeited a major commission, that is “the most selfish thing you’ve ever seen a man do.”
These men are not just an abstract ideal: there are many examples of them in real life. I would like to recognize one you might not have heard of: Ludwig von Mises. I think Mises the best and most dedicated defender of classical liberalism of the 20th century. He developed his idea in a climate of increasing state worship and socialist revolution across the world. He staunchly defended laissez faire economics during a period of growing government involvement in every level, and wrote his epic, Human Action, shortly after the world was getting out of a the Great Depression and into a major world war, as government was being accepted as the cure to every social and economic problem. He lost out prestigious university positions and had trouble printing his epic work when Keynesianism “proved” him wrong. Most of his former students turned away from his ideas and told him that he was his own worst enemy, and that everything he published was only hurting his career. As Lew Rockwell says, “Mises was surely aware that he was not advancing himself, and that every manuscript he produced, every book that came to print, was harming his career ever more. But he didn’t back off. Instead he chose to do the rarest thing of all in academia: he chose to tell the truth regardless of the cost, regardless of the trends, regardless of how it would play with the powers that be.”
Mises prevailed. He gained a small but growing following of new intellectuals who saw the truth in his views. The Mises Institute, established after his death, has been a major success, placing many free-market economists in university positions and becoming a major source of economic research, education, and support for free – market economists. Certainly neither Mises nor the Mises Institute are right on all the issues, but you will never find such dedication to ideas among the nihilistic and pragmatic liberals of today.
So here is my tribute to heroes. I hope I can live up to my heroes by living according to my own ideals and never forgetting that ideas matter.
Nothing exciting happening lately…but Tim’s kitten is pretty cute:
Update: I forgot all about my b-day, which I really didn’t do much on, though I got some nice presents ($)
“The key to professionalism, it is argued, is the sense of pride that involvement in the discipline generates. It is claimed that price advertising will bring about commercialization, which will undermine the attorney’s sense of dignity and self-worth. The hustle of the marketplace will adversely affect the profession’s service orientation, and irreparably damage the delicate balance between the lawyer’s need to earn and his obligation selflessly to serve. Advertising is also said to erode the client’s trust in his attorney: Once the client perceives that the lawyer is motivated by profit, his confidence that the attorney is acting out of a commitment to the client’s welfare is jeopardized. And advertising is said to tarnish the dignified public image of the profession. “
Commentary coming soon…
I remember a bully from my childhood who liked to beat up smart kids because he had no confidence in his academic ability, and violence was the only way that he could dominate his classmates. However, the bully was not the only person who had trouble keeping up: I constantly struggled to do well in my math classes — but unlike the bully, I felt no need to take my out frustration on my classmates. Instead of being jealous, I worked harder on my assignments until I was ahead of my class.
The bully in every jealous person is like the one from my childhood: instead of being inspired by high-achievers, he feels envy and even hatred towards them, shutting off any possibility of accomplishing anything great himself in the process. A bully sees the achievements of those around him as mocking his failures, and he hates successful people because they are everything he has decided he could not be. Unlike the bully, the self-confident high-achiever is the exact opposite — he accomplishes great things not out of jealousy, but out of a desire to fulfill his dreams. Great inventors do not try to match their peers, but to do the best they can: the Wright brothers invented a plane, Thomas Edison a light bulb, and Gordon Moore a microprocessor instead of a better bike, lantern, or vacuum tube. In short, there are two kinds of men: the self-confident high achiever who does great things, and jealous, self-hating bully who wishes nothing more than to see the high-achiever fail.
[From a letter to the editor I wrote in response to “Sorrow So Sweet: A Guilty Pleasure In Another’s Woe, ” a NYT article.]
I just finished watching the 1998 Disney movie “A Bug Life” and despite my hopes to the contrary, I was reminded how pervasive socialist ideology has become in absolutely everything Disney produces. I have come to expect collectivist overtones from Disney’s regular programming, but the extent to which its animated films are full of socialist indoctrination is simply disgusting. Unlike most liberal media companies, Disney produces more than the usual “multicultural” garbage but actually inserts Marxist ideology into the plot of its animated children’s movies.
“A Bugs Life” has all the elements of the topical Disney presentation of the class struggle: the proletariat, represented by the worker ants, the bourgeoisie, represented by the grasshoppers, the greedy slave-driving boss, represented by the “boss flea” in charge of the flee circus. Famous lines include [as I remember them]: “if the ants only realized that they outnumber us a hundred to one, we would be finished!” and “you’ve committed the ultimate sin: you put yourself before the colony!” If that were not enough, the flea-boss frequently explains “let’s go, there’s money to be made!” as he denies his worker’s request for a raise and proposes a routine where one the bugs is burnt to a crisp. Meanwhile, the movie makes it a point to show the ant-queen diligently joining the worker ants in their work, as she and Flik, the hero repeatedly explain “I care for the colony!” I’d like to say that Flik is at least a creative non-conformist, but the movie makes a point to show that none of his ideas are self-inspired, and all of them come to fruition only by collective effort.
Not surprisingly, the movie ends with the defeat of the overclass, as the revolutionary hero Flik inspires the ants to rise up and ensure that the ants get to keep all the “surplus” grain they collect by their collective effort. Compare this plot to “Antz,” a Dreamworks SKG release, which featured an ant who questioned his role in the ant collective and championed individualism and private ingenuity.
This review may be four years late, but Disney has clearly continued its tradition of promoting Marxist ideology in movies such as “Monster’s Inc.” where the villain is a factory owner who is found torturing little children (Can those capitalist pigs get any worse??) and is replaced by one of the factory workers by a .government agency. In general, everything Disney touches display several common elements: the subjugation of the individual to the collective, the rejection of all selfish motivations as immoral, the worship of authority figures, the proposition that all cultures and values (other than capitalism) are equivalent, and of course, the duality between the greedy capitalist slave-drivers, and the hardworking workers of the collective, who almost always rise up and show the evil capitalists who’s boss.
I’d point out some other examples of Disney socialism, but I do my very best not to support Disney in any way, and if you care about self-interest, and freedom, I strongly suggest you do the same.
A flash movie on the DNC website shows Bush pushing a senior off a cliff –the consequence of privatizing social security. Apparently, letting people decide what to do with their own money is the same thing as murder to liberals.
I would remind the sane reader that social security is in fact much more insecure that any stock market — after all, if you had invested in the stock market five years ago, you would have made the horrible loss of 0% interest, whereas social security payments are not only guaranteed to pay 0% interest, but are inflexible, unfair, untransferable (at death), and likely to break down, as the Ponzi scheme of the millenia unravels and millions loose as the so-called “lock-box” turns out to be empty.
Not to mention that social security is welfare socialism at its finest.
In yet another example of censorship by so-called liberals, an order of ARI fliers titled In Moral Defense of Israel sent to the University of Toronto Objectivist Club for a speech have been denied by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, which claimed “The following goods [the pamphlets] have been detained for a determination of tariff classification as they may constitute obscenity or hate propaganda.”
To read the whole story, see this.
In case you missed it, USA Today had a cover story on Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged, which was not all positive (it fell into the typical Attila vs Mother Theresa dichotomy) shows the growing influence Ayn Rand has on the world.
“Just days after a spelling error-ridden memo outlining Barbra Streisand’s political views on the pending Iraq war is faxed to congressional leaders, the artist finds herself in another highly-embarrassing turn: Streisand recited made-up Shakespeare lines before thousands at Sunday’s National Democratic Gala in Hollywood…
..Streisand received a standing ovation before walking onstage at the Kodak Theater, plus repeated ovations during her performance of song and lecture.
To make her case not to go to war against Iraq, Streisand quoted extensively from William Shakespeare — but the quotes were from a William Shakespeare hoax that has been circulating on the internet!…
..”I find George Bush and Dick Cheney frightening,” Streisand continued. “Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening… I find bringing the country to the brink of war unilaterally five weeks before an election questionable – and very, very frightening…”
[story from Drudge]