I apologize for not assigning massive power to your boogeyman/woman. You have complained about her twice in one week.
In this instance you shoehorned your disagreement with a novel author into a conversation about national civic engagement. Nobody was talking about her but you. Hence my new-agey phrase about how your disdain for her is so strong you blame her for current day American culture. I think she was a half decent author whose “Objectivist” philosophy is full of giant holes. I’m not new age btw, I’m a stocky white guy with a beard and I drive a pickup truck.
I guarantee you that most kids today can’t name the sitting VP or SOS, let alone name Rand. The guys that can name her aren’t truly objectivists, because nobody is. Not Rand Paul even.
I believe most teachers are doing a civic service whether that’s their motivation or not. They are smart enough to get a degree, but choose a field that pays less and surrounds them with other people’s asshole kids for 35 years.
Someone’s motivation isn’t important to me to determine whether the outcome of their actions is a civil service. Maybe they want summers off or solid benefits. Who cares?
Now if your real point is that our political leadership is a bunch of self serving, double dealing, corrupt assholes and that they should act more like statesmen… I’m with you 100%.
Looks like rats leaving a sinking ship… Watching the news today prolly fake but… Seems like alot of Rebs talking smack… Can we all just be honest at this point and say we woulda been better off with Bush or Clinton??? 2 yeras ago Vegas had that as the outcome… Ahh good ol Coke vs Pepsi we have our favorites but goes with most meals. But instead we got Orange Fanta… Seems to taste like shit with everything and giving folks heartburn, gas, & explosive shits
Good planning. Whether or not one agrees with her philosophy, those novels are dreadful as literature.(In Atlas Shrugged, one character gives a speech that lasts for 70 pages.)
If you want a less windy introduction to her ideas, may I suggest Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, a collection of essays by her and her disciples.
I’m actually being honest when I say: it isn’t nearly as bad as the left makes it out to be, just like Obama wasn’t nearly as bad as the right made him out to be.
Some darned creepy rape scenes in a few of the books as well.
I will admit that I was 18 when I read that book, got 30 pages into John Galt’s speech and skipped ahead. I remember thinking “rational self interest, we get it. Let’s move this along.”
To be fair… Those were the very people that he was elected to piss off, no?
I have a general statement on Trump and why I think he won, but I need to narrow down the novel it will be.
It’s an incredible time investment for… well something I don’t think I’ll get that much out of as someone kicking down 40’s door, wife, kids, house… Bought into the system…
Don’t get me wrong, I “hate” government, but I don’t hate government… You know?
I just don’t have that much time to invest into it. Plus I’d re-read the Monte Cristo before I picked up her stuff, but I’ve been dabbling in pysc more and more when I read these days.
I don’t think he was elected to ‘piss people off.’ He was elected because he 1) made a series of ludicrously unrealistic and irresponsible promises that a depressingly large portion of the electorate found credible; and 2) exploited an enormous reservoir of socioeconomic anxiety via xenophobic- and ethnocentric-aggrievement trolling.
Further, your original point was that ‘things aren’t as bad as the left makes them out to be.’ The fact that bona fide conservatives such as Corker, Flake and McCain seem to think things are that bad belies this assessment. Finally, even if Trump hoped to piss them off, and considers it a ‘win’ that he did–he probably does; Bannon certainly does–it doesn’t follow that accomplishing this goal means things aren’t bad.
Uh, I could write pages and pages about the political dynamic during the Late. Just some quick points - the Republic was doomed with Marian reforms of the legions - the center of power started shifting inexorably towards the legions, so much that later imperators (literally military commanders) presided over what was actually a glorified military headquarters.
Compare how an ambitious individual reached the top of the cursus honorum (the political rat race) before, let’s say Sulla’s dictatorship - start by being a patrician from one of the leading families of Rome, train in rhetoric, accompany a fellow patrician on a military campaign as a military tribune, hold minor offices in Rome proper (urban prefect for example), borrow a large sum of money to finance your political ambitions, invest a lot of time and money to create and groom networks of allies and clients/voters, lobby for a governorship of a province, rob the locals blind to pay off the loans, win a battle against whomever to show that you’re a competent general, receive a triumph, enter the elections for the consulship, bribe/cajole voters/friends/allies and become consul. And all that effort just for one (shared) year on the top. Checks and balances.
And how did this pan out a few hundred years later? Become a part of an emperor’s military retinue. When the emperor dies or when you’ve killed him, double, triple or quadruple pretorians’ pay and proclaim yourself emperor.
What’s the parallel with the modern politics? Well, the salutary lesson in all this is the myopic focus on one’s “base”, eliminating all those checks and balances as well not having time to focus on a wider array of issues and threats.
> “Being forty is a dreadful period in one’s life. One is young enough to still have dreams but too old to actually fulfill them. I wish I was ten years older so that old age would protect me from restlessness and anxiety or ten years younger so that I simply don’t care. Because now, now that I’ve have inexorably drifted a decade away from my thirtieth birthday, now I realize that being thirty is still the age of fearless youth”
Not very pertinent to the discussion, just wanted any excuse to drop one of my favorite quotes.
And you have posted about her as well. I’m sorry that I find her a miserable person whose ideology would only make the world as miserable as her own private one. If you were to be honest and fair, it’s obvious you are not since you have assumed, incorrectly I might add, that I am a leftist. You would have not posted anything at all about me and how I feel about Rand when I was not the one who brought her up in the first place. Yes, it may have been on another thread but I didn’t know there was a rule that stated you couldn’t mention someone from one thread in another.
Instead of commenting, or to use your word, complaining about me not liking Rand why don’t you simply address my issues with her? Unless your issue is simply the fact I have an issue with her. You find her a half decent author. I find her fiction to be a joke. If that hurts your sensibilities it’s not my problem. It really seems like your problem with me is that I think she was a fraud. Relax, she’s dead so it’s not like she cares.
I mentioned Reagan’s admiration for her. It doesn’t matter if most Americans have never heard of her but if the president is an admirer then I would say that’s a sign of her potential influence on American society. Paul Ryan is an admirer of Rand. I believe even Trump has stated he admires her. The Renaissance was a major influence on the world. Aristotle and Plato were major influences on the Renaissance. How many people back then actually read, or could even read, what they wrote? It didn’t matter as long as those who had the power to create change could read them.
I don’t blame her entirely for how things are but if anyone denies her influence, whether they find it positive or negative, then he isn’t paying attention and hasn’t for several decades.
Finally, civil service and civic duty are not the same thing.
I don’t like her either man. You seem to be personally injured by me some how, or agitated at least, I’m not sure why. The “hate on” comment was meant in jest and not a legit troll attempt.
As posted in the other thread she expresses no new ideas (rational self interest/the ills of collectivism), and she expresses them poorly compared to other real economists and philosophers.
Smith, Fetter, Hayek, Mises, Friedman, Sowell, Rothbard etc… all had a far greater influence on the Austrian/Libertarian school of economics that Reagan and his cabinet believed in.
We don’t need to go back and forth on this, I personally don’t think she is important. Certainly not to the level you’ve elevated her to (you mentioned Aristotle and Plato in your last post). Don’t put Rand in the same post as them FFS, even if it’s a metaphor.
As for civic duty vs civil service… again: Who cares? Motivations are unimportant, outcomes are. The important thing is that we have teachers, cops, firefighters, warriors, postmen etc… It doesn’t matter what political, social and economic forces drove people to those careers.
Yea but if we had Bush wed have normalness and not all this craziness. Probably actually passed stuff by now. Im not saying run for your y2k bunkers but jeesh every week its a new turd to sniff
Melania telling kids not to bully. She could sum that up by saying please do the exact opposite of my husband when it comes to how you treat people and you will be just fine.