Forum Post: Libe(R)tarians = Terrorists.
Posted 11 years ago on Dec. 30, 2012, 11:18 a.m. EST by shoozTroll
(17632)
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Yes the great hero of the libe(R)tarians, John Galt was a terrorist.
A hateful person who employed others to do his bidding and cause his desired damage.
Kinda sounds like ALEC.
I was just checking out the Liberty movement site. Man, they need to work on the verbiage there. It says right on the homepage: "Virtually all the progress the human race has enjoyed during the past few centuries is due to the increasing acceptance of free markets, civil liberties, and self-ownership." http://www.libertarianism.com/content/the-liberty-movement/lib_mov
That makes it sound like us all retreating to our lairs and being separate has been a positive. It seems our society has become less and less community oriented and more and more people feel isolated. Fewer people take care of each other. Our schools, roads and bridges are decaying. We've followed the "every man for himself" Ayn Rand philosophy for a long time now and it's taken us down a long dark road. I tend to think more along the lines of what Dostoevsky, Einstein and Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote below:
Dostoevsky wrote the following in the Brothers Karamazov:
"Today, everyone asserts his own personality and strives to live a full life as an individual. But these efforts lead not to a full life but to suicide, because instead of realizing his personality, man only slips into total isolation. For in our age, man has been broken up into self-contained individuals, each of whom retreats into his lair, trying to stay away from the rest, hiding himself and his belongings from the rest of mankind, and finally isolating himself from people and people from him.
And while he accumulates material wealth in his isolation, he thinks with satisfaction how mighty and secure he has become, because he is mad and cannot see that the more goods he accumulates, the deeper he sinks into suicidal impotence. The reason for this is that he has become accustomed to relying only on himself; he has split off from the whole and become an isolated unit; he has trained his soul not to rely on human help, not to believe in man and mankind, and only to worry that the wealth and privileges he has accumulated may get lost.
Everywhere men today are turning scornfully away from the truth that the security of the individual cannot be achieved by his isolated efforts but only by mankind as a whole.
BUT AN END to this fearful isolation is bound to come and all men will understand how unnatural it was for them to have isolated themselves from one another. This will be the spirit of the new era and people will look in amazement at the past when they sat in darkness and refused to see the light. . . . . . Until that day, we must keep hope alive, and now and then a man must set an example, even if only an isolated one, by trying to lift his soul out of its isolation and offering it up in an act of brotherly communion, even if he is taken for one of God's fools.
This is necessary to keep the great idea alive."
Albert Einstein said this:
“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way: "I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. We are, all of us, inextricably linked."
I agree with your lines of thinking, and you will find that I fight the ideals of Ayn Rand at every turn I can find them, as well as the ideals of the founders of the modern libe(R)tarian party, who would be the Kochs, oil magnates and others of the 1%.
Today's iteration has little to do with the French revolution.
I completely agree.
Like many ideologies, it is very seductive on the surface, but dig down and it turns ugly.
It has seduced so many. A real slippery slope once people start down that path. Recall Paul Ryan quotes showing how much of his development as a person was based on the grip Ayn Rand had on him. At some point people who are seduced by that ideology lose the ability to sel-correct and they stopping looking critically at their own beliefs. The philosophy of Ayn Rand is an easy out because you know longer have to wrestle with things. She provides all the easy answers and fundamentalism sets in like dry rot. I wish I knew more about how to bring such a person back to reality, help them shed their fundamentalism. Any tried and true arguments / methods you're aware of for helping good people who are falling victim to the philosophy of Ayn Rand reverse course??
I've had some luck with the union angle, but there are of course, no guarantees.
The truly hard core among them will be all over the map to protect Ayn's philosophy.
I will keep searching for the "powerful response" to Ayn Rand folks and will let you know if I come across it :)
This thread is one of those............:)
Nice post, shooz. I read "Atlas Shrugged" when I was very young and didn't get it at all at the time. I realize now that that was because Ayn Rand is a psycho!
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Libe(R)tarians have no concern for the community they live in. They got theres cause they deserve it, you don't have yours cause you are lazy!
The most damaging part oftheir ideology is "you're on your own" mentality.
Selfish, Greedy, bastards. Must be identified denounced, and run outta town.
Just MHO.
Libe(R)tarains, or as I like to call them, neolibe(R)tarains are the Worlds #1 economic/political terrorists.
They feel no compunction to working here in America, their "homeland", either. It's their profit center........For now.
The NeoLibe(R)tarians care for nothing but profit (ahead of people). They stand at the top of a planetary oligarchy that includes business & govt, especially the US govt.
Best thing we can do of course is to take the peoples govt back by 1st getting money out of politics.
Exactly.
It is the most accurate label yet for the profiteers who care nothing for those they profit from....
Cheap.....and strictly, financially controlled elections.
Get all the money OUT!
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Agreed. Movetoamend.org is a good start.
Here's a current example.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/12/30/1379681/lindsay-graham-i-will-destroy-americas-solvency-unless-the-social-security-retirement-age-is-raised/
Galtist to the core and pretending to be a Republican.
Ummm, you do know he's a fictional character right? "Hateful person who employed others..." You might as well be talking about Dr. Doom. Kind of a quantum leap to call an entire group terrorists based on that. Technically Francis Marion and Josephine Baker (French Resistance) were terrorists. What group does that condemn?
I didn't know they were French.
Neither does France.
http://www.kochbrothersexposed.com/
Today's libe(R)tarians have as much to do with the French revolution as I have to the man in the moon.
Neither did Marion or Baker. You missed the point completely (and have no clue about history)
Let's try this. Al Gore's book was found in the Unabomber's cabin. What would you say to someone who tried to use that to link/label Gore and environmentalists in general to terrorism? Remember, the Unabomber killed/maimed a lot more people than John Galt did.
Take a look at the actions of one of the founders, who's also a Rand acolyte.
http://www.kochbrothersexposed.com/
Eco terrorism at the least.
This isn't fiction, it's reality based on fiction.
The Unabomber was reality based on reality. He was (is) a Gore acolyte. So, Environ(M)entalists = Terrorists?
I like Ian Fleming novels. Does that mean I = secret agent? I like Harry Potter. I = wizard?
If I recall, no one has based an entire political/philosophical movement on novels written by those people.
You're presenting a false argument.
The Koch's on the other hand freely distribute and endorse the works of Rand and extol her teachings as Gospel.......Treat her as a God even.
Not so with James Bond.
Gospel's fine. Let them believe what they want. Let them think she's a God. People thought Eric Clapton was God. Nobody got hurt.
Do people mail out letter bombs because of her? Blow real people up? That's a problem. Sane people are more concerned about that than bombs in fictional books.
Ayn Rand was a psychopath.
So are the Kochs.
The Kochs are damaging our nation as we speak.
Clapton? Not so much.
Do you actually have a rational argument?
A better one than yours. All Libertarians are terrorists because of a fictional character in a novel? I'd hate to hear what you think all black people are after you listen to gansta rap.
Do you always miss the point?
I guess you can add that to what libe(R)tarians are all about too.
You skip over the Kochs and play with a single point, at the expense of all others.
Here's some more for you.
http://critiquesoflibertarianism.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-is-libertarianism.html
And the original.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html
You could also look up various threads of the subject of Ms. Rand here on the forum.
But you won't.
Conservatives are lazy brained.
That's been proven too, but I doubt you'll admit it.
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"or as I call em"
Calling any political ideology terrorism is borderline insanity.
Combined with your "coining" of a silly ass term that you seem to be oh so proud of.... you are probably more of a problem than a solution in a group type scenario.
Nice.
Another personal attack from you, that has nothing to do with the article in the OP.
Keep up the "good" work.
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Really? We are going to start calling libertarians terrorists?
I hear people on the right call the left haters of america constantly. Lets not get involved in that kind of meaningless and sensationalized drama.
Oh I keep forgetting you call the actions of the founders gossip and/ or wedge issues.
Even considering ALEC a matter of States "rights".
If you would turn away from entities like the JBS and take look at what they actually do you would find that they ARE terrorists.
http://www.kochbrothersexposed.com/
Now if you would like to turn away from your insulting ways and comment on what the article actually said, that would be nice.
"The government is a reflection of the people, of society itself"
Sounds to me that the author, if asked to describe our current criminals in Congress and the people's continued support of their destroying the country, would be a fan of the ol Masses are Asses post!!
This government may represent you, but it sure as hell doesnt represent me.
You're still unable to react to what was posted, nor what was actually said.
It's the equivalent of talking to yourself.
You're the biggest mistake is simply this.
By your own reckoning of the 99%, YOU are the biggest ASS of all.
Do you agree with the author on that initial point he made?
Do you feel this government represents the population?
I agree with the article, but not with your continued baiting.
Why don't you offer your opinion on the article and the added link of proof?
There was a quote at the beginning that addressed his main preface- that government is a representation of the populace.
""The government is a reflection of the people, of society itself""
So I will repeat- Do you agree with the author on that?
The first three paragraphs.
"What is a terrorist? It is someone who wishes to instill terror in a population to meet some religious, political or, ideological goal, to deliberately target or disregard the safety of regular people. Some definitions even now include acts of unlawful violence such as racketeering or protection rackets.
Understanding this, John Galt, the hero of the Ayn Rand novel “Atlas Shrugged” is easy to identify as nothing but a common terrorist.
Some have called him heroic. But what did he actually do? When presented with a situation which he did not like, he ran away. Instead of addressing what he viewed as injustice in government, he turned on the government itself. The government is a reflection of the people, of society itself, and as a result, in so doing John Galt decided on a course of action which resulted in the destruction of not only the government he despised, but the very people needed to support his businesses."
I'm not seeing what you say is there....................................?
Not seeing it in this, the longest quote from the Koch brothers link, either.
"Every person in this country who cares about democracy should care about this work." – Ed Schultz
You probably don't care much for Eddy, but that's neither here, nor there.
So that leaves the Lindsay Graham threat.
"Although official Washington is currently fixated on the so-called “Fiscal Cliff,” the biggest threat to American prosperity is the debt ceiling, which must be raised in February to prevent economic catastrophe. If Republicans refuse to reach a deal on the so-called cliff, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that they will spark a new recession in 2013. But if Republicans block action on the debt ceiling, they will make that potential recession look quaint. Without raising the debt ceiling, the United States will be forced to embrace austerity so severe it will lead to “a bigger GDP drop than that experienced during the Great Recession of 2008.”
But in an interview on Fox News Sunday this morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) threatened to oppose this must-pass bill unless Social Security benefits are taken away from millions of future retirees:
Nope......not seeing it there either..............
So, as you like to say.
" Once again"
Why are you baiting me, instead of responding to the OP?
"Some have called him heroic. But what did he actually do? When presented with a situation which he did not like, he ran away. Instead of addressing what he viewed as injustice in government, he turned on the government itself. *The government is a reflection of the people, of society itself*, and as a result, in so doing John Galt decided on a course of action which resulted in the destruction of not only the government he despised, but the very people needed to support his businesses."
Im not baiting you, Im saying I dont agree with the author that this corporate bought out monster represents the people.
Do you understand the term context?
Or "cherry picking", as in a quote?
This is pointing out that destruction of that type of government is an act of self destruction.
You're still baiting and avoiding the gist of the OP.
Here is a serious question. Other groups strike. Why can't the mind be on strike?
Full unionization, is not something Ms. Rand would have approved of, though I fail to see what that has to do with terrorism at the heart of her message..
Wasn't it Howard Roark who blew up the public housing project?
A personal hero of yours?
I guess he figured someone else had already insured it, and besides, he didn't do any of the hard work to build it anyway..
According to The Fountainhead, Howard Roark designed the public housing. He let Peter Keating try to push it through the board, who took the plans and changed them. Howard, being proud of his work and trying to provide the best product for the community at a profit, blew it up, after sending the guard away, because his project was hijacked by those who could not have done it on their own but felt it was their right to botch the plans up.
You didn't answer the question.
Then you do agree though, that like Galt, he was a terrorist.
what I like about John Galt and Howard Roark is their drive to make a profit through the product of their mind. This product would help the people around them. But the people who don't produce, who wouldn't be able to produce these products, see it as their right to take the products or change them. All it would accomplish would be to up the price and decrease the benefit. So, yeah, I guess they could be my personal heroes. But then, so is Hunter Thompson and Henry Rollins.
As long as you understand that you idolize terrorism.
This must truly confuse your love of WallStreet.
Libertarianism can be coopted and corrupted just like progressivism or conservatism. In its pure form, libertarianism is about the individual taking care of themself, and in turn helping the group. A business owner wants to make money. they are not going to make money selling junk, so they will produce the most effective product. The product or service that is sold will help the people who buy it, while giving the business owner a profit.
Modern libe(R)tarianism, is what Kochs and their friends have made of it, nothing else and nothing more.
If it wasn't for them, you would never have heard of it.
To those that idolize Rand it is a thing of PURE hate.
Selling junk is unprofitable?
You've never heard of Wallyworld, or even planned obsolescence..
Communist sheep here always prefer handing their money to the government, who know what's best for them.
LOL
You funny guy.
You don't make any sense, but you are funny.
Says who???
You?
You still haven't found your ass with both hands tied behind your back.
Wow. Ok. Words cannot describe how wrong this article is.
Only in so far as you lack the intellectual and linguistic capacity to deny it's truths.
Don't worry though. I'm sure a reaction will be around soon on CATO or some such.
Then you can post that, so I can pick it apart at the seams.