tagged w/ Rand
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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., lambasted the Energy Department today, saying the agency forces Americans to buy toilets that don‘t flush properly and light bulbs they don’t want in the name of energy efficiency.
During a hearing of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Paul told Energy Department official Kathleen Hogan “my toilets don’t work in my house. And I blame you and people like you who want to tell me what I can install in my house.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/rand-paul-to-uncle-sam-get-your-hands-off-my-toilet/Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., lambasted the Energy Department today, saying the agency forces... more
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Miss Rand, famously a believer in rugged individualism and personal responsibility, was a strong defender of self-interest. She was a staunch opponent of government programs from the New Deal and Social Security to the Great Society and Medicare.
A Library of Congress survey of the most influential books on American readers, "Atlas Shrugged" ranked second only to the Bible. Rand's influence is encyclopedic ranging from Alan Greenspan to Paul "I grew up on Ayn Rand" Ryan (R-Wis), a "Young Gun" who aims to cut or privatize Medicare and Social Security.
The Right should be commended politically for their ability to develop and stick to a unified message. But close inspection of this unified message reveals a disappointing secret identified by a student of the Godfather of Neo-conservatism, --- the University of Chicago's Leo Strauss. The student, Anne Norton ("Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire") identified what she called VIP-DIP meaning Venerated in Public, Disdained in Private. "Do as I say, not as I do." The list of vip-dipers on the Right runs from Harold Bloom to Newt Gingrich, but certainly not Ayn Rand. Right?
Say it ain't so Alisa Zinovievna Rosenbaum.
A heavy smoker who refused to believe that smoking causes cancer brings to mind those today who are equally certain there is no such thing as global warming. Unfortunately, Miss Rand was a fatal victim of lung cancer.
However, it was revealed in the recent "Oral History of Ayn Rand" by Scott McConnell (founder of the media department at the Ayn Rand Institute) that in the end Ayn was a vip-dipper as well. An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand's law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand's behalf she secured Rand's Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O'Connor (husband Frank O'Connor).
As Pryor said, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out" without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn "despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently... She didn't feel that an individual should take help."
But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so. Apart from the strong implication that those who take the help are morally weak, it is also a philosophic point that such help dulls the will to work, to save and government assistance is said to dull the entrepreneurial spirit.
In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.Miss Rand, famously a believer in rugged individualism and personal responsibility,... more
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A videographer at this weekend’s Fancy Farm political celebration in Kentucky hounded a man pretending to be part of the Tea Party Movement, wearing Rand Paul swag and holding up a racist anti-immigrant sign, badgering him to reveal who he was. The cameraman caught back up with him when, later, the man walked with supporters Paul’s Democrat opponent, Jack Conway.A videographer at this weekend’s Fancy Farm political celebration in Kentucky... more
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Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and... more
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"Where is John Galt?" reads a sign in the back of a vehicle heading down Interstate 85 in Atlanta, Georgia.
The quotation is wrong. As any reader of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" can attest, the correct line is "Who is John Galt?" but the point is well taken.
In the midst of the credit crisis and the federal government's massive bailout plan, the works of Rand, a proponent of a libertarian, free-market philosophy she called Objectivism, are getting new attention.
"If only 'Atlas' were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster," Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Moore wrote in early January.
It's obviously getting attention from the general public. Rand book sales are "going through the roof," said Yaron Brook, the president of the Ayn Rand Institute. According to Brook, "Atlas Shrugged," her most famous novel, has sold more copies in the first four months of 2009 than it did for all of 2008 -- and in 2008, it sold 200,000 copies. It's been in Amazon.com's top 50 for more than a month.
Not bad for a 1,100-page doorstop of a book that came out in 1957, by an author who died in 1982.
"So many people see the parallels with actually what's going on, with the government taking over the banks, with the government kind of taking over the automobile industry, a president who fires the CEO of a major American corporation. These are the kind of things that come out of 'Atlas Shrugged,' " Brook said.
Even Hollywood is said to be interested, which is only fitting, since Rand was once a screenwriter. But developments have come in fits and starts. "Godfather" producer Albert S. Ruddy once wanted to make a film and talk of miniseries adaptations emerged in the '70s and '90s."Where is John Galt?" reads a sign in the back of a vehicle heading down... more
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A new report by the conservative Rand Corporation calls the so-called 'War on Terrorism' fundamentally flawed, doomed to failure. The study pulls the rug from under John McCain who had promised not just more of the same old horse dung but perhaps another one hundred, another '10,000 years' of war against Iraq!
Saying that the US should 're-think' the so-called 'war on terrorism', the report claims that Bush failed to meet his own stated objectives. It was, the report concludes, the wrong approach to begin with.
Rand stopped short of repeating my charge: the 'war on terror' was just a cover for Bush's assumption of dictatorial powers which he accomplished with the Patriot Act and numerous 'signing statements', in effect, his de facto 'rule by decree'.
All terrorist groups eventually end. But how do they end? Answers to this question have enormous implications for dealing with al Qa'ida and suggest fundamentally rethinking post–September 11 US counter terrorism strategy.
The evidence since 1968 indicates that most groups have not ended due to military pressure but because (1) they joined the political process or (2) local police and intelligence agencies arrested or killed key members and that few groups achieved victory within this timeframe.
The ending of most terrorist groups requires a range of policy instruments, such as careful police and intelligence work, military force, political negotiations, and economic sanctions. Yet policymakers need to understand where to prioritize their efforts with limited resources and attention.
--Rand Corporation, US Should Rethink "War On Terrorism" Strategy to Deal with Resurgent Al Qaida http://www.rand.org/news/press/2008/07/29/
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More at link.
I didn't need a think tank, conservative or other, to tell me this - I came to the same conclusion in October 2001 when war preparations and threats against Afghanistan were being vociferously made by the Bush administration, and posted as much on many different discussion boards. That it took seven years for a conservative think tank to come to that conclusion says a lot about the speed of thinking in such think tanks...A new report by the conservative Rand Corporation calls the so-called 'War on... more
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